THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, March 26, 1995 TAG: 9503240190
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 07 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: Bill Reed
LENGTH: Medium: 76 lines
Someone, somewhere once said, ``You don't fool around with Mother Nature.''
The source of this bit of wisdom is unknown, at least in this corner, but it applies today as surely it did when it was coined.
Almost every day the premise is borne out by foolhardy humans somewhere on the planet.
An earthquake wipes out high rises and freeways that are built along shaky and well-known fault lines in California or Japan.
Fire, wind and rain destroy zillion-dollar homes built on the temperamental mountainsides overlooking L.A.; flood waters rush over man-made levees in the Midwest or in California, covering homes and thousands of acres of carefully tended cropland.
Avalanches run down skiers, mountain climbers and even entire villages in the Alps.
Many a foolish adventurer has perished slowly and painfully after wandering into the searing wastes of the Sahara or the Mojave, or trekking into the barren, subfreezing tracts of the polar regions.
Mother Nature has always been there to teach upstart man not to get too big for his britches.
And she has not overlooked Virginia, either. The history of the state is replete with stories of storm-tossed ships being battered on its shores; floods scouring fertile valleys and drowning river-bottom communities; lightning-ignited fires raging through thousands of acres of timberlands, either in the Great Dismal Swamp or in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Droughts have turned abundant corn, peanut and soybean fields into burned and desolate badlands.
The folks who live at the water's edge in Sandbridge have had a taste of Big Mom's wrath as well.
Each winter, nor'easters sweep beachfront cottages out to sea or rip away supposedly storm-proof steel bulkheads like so much tissue paper.
You can almost picture Mother Nature sitting back, licking her chops as she watches the progress of a $100 million hurricane project being designed for the resort strip and North End beaches.
It is a huge undertaking that has been in the planning stages for more than 20 years. Only recently has it advanced to the actual design stage, despite rumblings from Washington that it may fall victim to budget axes wielded by President Clinton and the Republican-dominated Congress.
In a series of meetings held over the past two weeks, officials of the Army Corps of Engineers, who spearhead the project, say they have enough money to finish the actual design work. When that money is spent, they vow to continue lobbying for more to complete the job.
It is to be a shared project, in which the federal government promises to ante up 65 percent of the cost and the City of Virginia Beach agrees to fork over the remaining 35 percent.
If the job is completed, designers say it would provide a 13 1/2-foot-high sea wall, topped by a new and wider Boardwalk from Rudee Inlet to 40th Street; a resort beach three-times wider than it is now; new bulkheading, wider beaches and a shored up dune line extending to 89th Street.
Engineers involved in the plan say it is designed to protect Oceanfront property from a 100-year storm - a big blow on the order of Hurricane Hugo, which roared across the Caribbean and Southeastern United States in 1989, claiming 504 lives and devastating millions of dollars in property.
So, if eggheads with calculators think they're gonna stop Big Mom from dancing on the Virginia Beach shoreline, they better think again.
It's a long established fact that she goes where she wants to go and does what she wants to do, kicking butt and taking names in the process.
If all that Virginia Beach big wigs really want is a fancy new Boardwalk and wider beaches, why don't they just say so? Go ahead, spend the money to build it. Call it oceanfront reclamation, Boardwalk beautification, resort shoreline enhancement or beach replenishment - anything but a hurricane protection project.
Just don't tempt fate - or Mother Nature. by CNB