Coastal settlement

We have friends with vacation houses in Lewes and Bethany Beach (DE).  We’ve enjoyed really nice weekends with them and hope we’ll be invited again.  But one has to wonder now about vacation places along the coasts, and about development generally in these areas.  Is Hurricane Sandy likely to have any effect?  I’ll be curious to see what, if anything, happens to real estate values in places out on the Eastern Shore.  Will people still be buying vacation homes?  Will state and/or county planners take steps that might limit new developments?  We know sea levels are rising and that record-setting storms like Katrina and Sandy are likely to become more frequent.  Yet the most densely-settled parts of the U.S. are along the coasts; that density has been increasing; and it is likely to continue to increase.  Pressure is likely to remain on all levels of government to continue spending billions to protect coastal development.  In Wednesday’s Washington Post,  James D. Fraser, Sarah M. Karpanty and Daniel H. Catlin, coastal ecologists in Virginia Tech’s College of Natural Resources and Environment, point out some of what’s at stake and provide some useful policy suggestions.  Fingers crossed that some folks are listening.