Healey’s Massachusetts Climate Change Coastal Home Buyout Plan

Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey has another plan for spending taxpayer money, but this has nothing to do with filling potholes, fixing aging bridges or ensuring the trains run on time.

Convinced that Mother Nature has a bone to pick with the Commonwealth, Healey is readying for a fight.

A climate alarmist, Healey is convinced that rising sea levels and gargantuan storms threaten to wipe out the Bay State's coastal communities. Healey is preparing to tackle the beast, using a fistful of taxpayer money.

State House News Service reported Healey's Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs has released a "50-year coastal resilience strategy to safeguard vulnerable coastal communities, home to more than 3 million residents, from the escalating impacts of climate change."

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EEA's website says, "The goal of the ResilientCoasts initiative is to develop a comprehensive, state-wide strategy for coastal resilience in the Commonwealth."

"In collaboration with the state's coastal communities and other stakeholders, ResilientCoasts will pursue a multi-pronged approach to identify regulatory, policy, and funding mechanisms to develop focused long-term solutions," according to the site.

SHNS reported the administration is considering a "state-funded voluntary buyout program that would help acquire residential properties in areas facing chronic tidal flooding." The program would allow residents to sell to the state and move to "less risky" areas.

"Those properties are then transferred to public ownership, either by local or state government, and are permanently conserved, protected, and returned to a natural state to provide flood buffers and protection for adjacent and inland neighborhoods," according to the proposal.

A proposed study would look for ways to strengthen state evacuation corridors and establish emergency community centers.

The plan also calls for expanding the Climate Ready Housing Program, a state initiative aimed at deep energy retrofits in affordable housing to "fund resilience retrofits such as floodproofing basements and installing backflow valves to prevent sewer backups to make low-income and vulnerable housing more climate resilient," according to SHNS.

How much this would cost and where the money would come from is unclear.

The public has until June 12, 2025 to comment on the proposal.