scale their homeowner and property insurance fees according to the individual risk involved in a given property (just like auto insurance) and eliminate national flood insurance. Thus, those who choose to own structures in high risk areas will have to pay more, perhaps much more in premiums and the rest of us will not have to supplement their losses to the degree that we do now. Those who wish to build in an exceptionally high risk area might be denied insurance completely. Thus, the market place will ultimately decide where people build and what the price of repeated washouts will be for all of us. My guess is that within a few storm cycles, when people find that they must pay the entire cost of replacement entirely out of their own pockets, a lot fewer structures will be built below, say, 30 vertical feet above mean high tide. Welcome, . Do you have an existing ScientificAmerican.com account? Report Abuse Are you sure? X Institutional Access It has been identified that the institution you are trying to access this article from has institutional site license access to Scientific American on nature.com . To access this article in its entirety through site license access, click below.