President Joe Biden’s $3.8 million vacation home in Delaware has a 98 percent chance of being flooded in the next five years due to climate change increasing sea levels.
The six-bedroom house is located in Rehoboth and sits less than a mile from the shore line, which places it within FEMA’s Special Flood Hazard Area – the zone that would be overrun with water during a 100-year flood, CNN reports.
The Mid-Atlantic state has experienced a sea level rise of more than a foot in the past century, but the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warns it will continue to rise over the next century and flowing water will eventually overtake its coastal areas.
Although Climate change plays a major role, the land Biden’s home sits on is naturally sinking and puts this region at an even higher risk of rising sea levels – and levels are increasing faster than anywhere else in the world.
President Joe Biden’s $3.8 million vacation home in Delaware has a 98 percent chance of being flooded in the next five years due to climate change increasing sea levels
Approximately 5.4 percent, or 100 square miles, of Delaware resides in the 100-year floodplain and by 2050, this land mass is predicted to increase to 7.1 percent or 130 square miles due to rising sea levels, according to States at Risk.
But Biden’s neighborhood sits right in the danger zone where sea levels are expected to rise 1.5 feet by 2040 and then five feet by 2120.
The million-dollar vacation home appears to have been to overcome flooding, as the living quarters are 10 feet off ground because they sit above high ceiling garages.
And this seems to be the running design for most newer homes around the neighborhood.
Rehoboth beach is part of Sussex County, which is the third with the newest homes built in the highest-risk area for future flooding out of all US coastal counties.
Biden’s vacation home is located in Rehoboth and sits less than a mile from the shore line, which places it within FEMA’s Special Flood Hazard Area – the zone that would be overrun with water during a 100-year flood
Regardless of the risk, about $500 million worth of new homes have been built in the area since 2010 – Biden’s was constructed in 2017, Delaware Online reports.
The president purchased the home for $2.47 million, but it has since gone up in value to $3.8 million.
The last storm to cause major destruction was in 1962, which destroyed 2,000 homes near the coastline of Rehoboth beach to Fenwick Island.
After the storm dissipated, 50 percent of construction parcels along the coastline were vacant and now 50 years later only two percent is empty.
Biden is known for taking action to combat climate change
Biden is known for taking action to combat climate change with plans to achieve a 100 percent clean energy economy and net-zero emissions no later than 2050 – which he calls the Biden plan.
Biden’s climate and environmental justice proposal will make a federal investment of $1.7 trillion over the next ten years, leveraging additional private sector and state and local investments to total more than $5 trillion.
However, the plan is not black and white, as it each taxpayer an additional $3,500 each year to fund infrastructure to make it happen.
The Biden administration’s pledge would require by far the most ambitious US climate effort ever, nearly doubling the reductions that the Obama administration had committed to in the Paris climate accord.
But Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell dismissed the administration’s plans as costly and ineffective.
‘This is quite the one-two punch,’ McConnell said in a Senate speech Thursday. ‘Toothless requests of our foreign adversaries… and maximum pain for American citizens.’
