Washblog || Goldy, Gardner and Washaway beach

Goldy, Gardner and Washaway beach

By emmettoconnell
Sun Sep 16, 2007 at 02:50:53 PM PST
Section: Washington State Topic: Off topic

Photo by Erika Langley from the Washaway Beach collection.

Goldy posts up on the loss of our working port due to sea level rise. Gardner posts on back about how "Rational scientists" and the market proves Goldy wrong.

Gardner uses no links that may point to those folks apparently being rational or to his claim that the market proves Goldy wrong because water front property values continue to rise. But, I can link to my counter claim of Washaway Beach. Sometimes, Gardner, markets can be irrational because people make irrational decisions, like buying a house on a piece of property that they know will be washed away in a few years. From the Seattle Times:

From Greg Tumidanski's front deck, the steel-gray ribbon of the Pacific Ocean stretches beyond sight. Pelicans divebomb the surf. The wind is gentle and warm.
All this -- a cabin on more than seven acres of oceanfront land -- he picked up for just $45,000 two years ago.

It was a deal so good it just had to have a catch: Tumidanski expects his oasis on the sea to be gone in about three years, consumed by the omnivorous waves at Washaway Beach.

And, a more jaded look:

The name of this community is - wait for it - WASHAWAY BEACH!! Washafreakingway Beach. Where the hell do they think the name comes from??!! It comes from the Pacific's nasty habit of washing away sections of the coastline in that particular area!! *chortle snort* And people, otherwise rational people BUILD THEIR HOUSES THERE!! And guess who's incredibly surprised and shocked when the Pacific Ocean - which used to be a couple of hundred yards away - is suddenly knocking on their front door because another piece of beach has washed away?

I'm certainly not saying that the market for Washaway houses is on the rise, the opposite actually. But, in the face of the eroding ocean, people are still buying the property as if it has any value at all. In the face of a much more nebulous and harder to grasp concept of global climate change, I could see how people would still want to pay higher prices for waterfront property.

Washington Department of Ecology: The most rapid erosion on the US Pacific coast

< Ray Peretti of Renton and the $7.7 Million Campaign to Cheat Washingtonians | Alan Greenspan 'Iraq war largely about oil'. So let's all do our part and Reduce Carbon Footprint >

Goldy, Gardner and Washaway beach | 3 comments (3 topical)

4? 7? 9? THOUSAND miles of

water

thousands of feet deep

and it doesn't respect the 'rational free' market of nitwits building on sand?

they blame 'the government' for not allowing them to do stupid things which is going to cost, US, the government, a ton of money

then after the inevitable ... PACIFIC OCEAN!! reclaims a few feet

they'll whine and snivel that 'the government', US, should have done something to protect them from their blinding stupidity.

look, living less than 25 or 50 feet above a seasonal high water mark isn't a good risk, unless you like drownding.

rmm.

http://www.liemail.com/BambooGrassroots.html

by rmdSeaBos on Sun Sep 16, 2007 at 03:10:45 PM PST

* 1 none 0 *

Can we buy distress sale at Washaway Beach?

Not kidding here, being sarcastic, or snarky. I would, Yes, Would buy property at Washaway Beach which is just on the other side of where we live on Willapa Bay -- straight across by boat, but about 30 miles circling Willapa River via South Bend, Raymond, Tokeland and arriving at North Cove - Washaway Beach. I have tried to convince dear husband to please, let's buy a distress sale piece of property at Washaway Beach.

I know it will soon give way to the Pacific Ocean, and I know it is not an 'investment' in any sense of the word. It would be more like a 'rental', until it is no more...whatever years of use available to us and that is worthwhile to me. No inheritance for the kids or grandkids cause it wouldn't be there any more, but they could make a visit to see the Pacific Ocean where Grandma and Grandpa's beach property used to be .. and I think that is a cool legacy to leave them.

When we have visitors to our home in Bay Center, I try to make it a point to drive them to Washaway Beach and showing them how it is literally being washed away into the Pacific Ocean - or more correctly stated, how the Pacific Ocean is claiming land. For some odd reason, I state is as Pacific Ocean claiming back land, as if it belonged to the ocean before it was land. I also call the areas where the trees are dying off and converging 'boneyards'. How the seawater undermines the rooted trees on land and the trees die off and fall, becoming weathered by the wind and seas until they look like a boneyard.

This year the beach has blown up onto Hwy 105, literally, and I wonder how long before that section of Hwy 105 is claimed by the beach and sea. Once already the Native American cemetary in that area was moved further inland to avoid being taken by the sea. Now the sea is washing up onto the Hwy about where the cemetary was relocated and it looks to my amateurish eyes like the Pacific Ocean will claim Hwy 105 in that spot and once again attempt to claim that very cemetary which lies right across the road from the washing up sand on the highway.

On the Surge in Iraq "--we have set the bar so low it's buried in the sand at this point." - Barack Obama

by Lietta Ruger on Mon Sep 17, 2007 at 10:08:14 AM PST

* 2 none 0 *

Excellent!

Thank you for this post.

The sooner we find a way to put an end to this myth that people act on a primarily rational basis, the more likely we are to stop our environmental and political free-fall.

Lietta, I can see why you'd want to "lease" land like that... That actually is rational...

by noemie maxwell on Mon Sep 17, 2007 at 05:55:31 PM PST

* 3 none 0 *

Goldy, Gardner and Washaway beach | 3 comments (3 topical)

<CE