Editor, Gazette-Journal:

The FEMA juggernaut wasted no time reprimanding the county board for its Islander vote. In actual fact (Wall Street Journal, the “Government’s Flood Insurance Problem” video), flood insurance is already $25 billion “underwater.” Harvey and Irma may add $11 billion each, and let me guess—$15 billion for Florence, maybe. What will Congress do, in an election year like this, about a program nearly $62 billion in the red. The property lifting fiasco down Garden Creek way is still vivid in our memory.

The flood insurance money leaving the county as premiums is, in fact, needed here for mitigation required to see us through mid-century—at which time, new super computer models are implying that we face a definite flood and tide end game in the lowlands.

In Holland and Belgium, they live with this problem and deal with it. Water can be pumped, drainage improved, and there are ways to prevent end-game liquefaction of soils ar...