Day After Day, the Whole Place Slipping Away

Smith Islanders debate buyout offered by state

Areal photo of Tyler Town, Smith Island

Superstorm Sandy barely laid a glove on Smith Island last fall, to hear residents tell it. Though storm-driven flooding damaged hundreds of homes in Crisfield and the rest of Somerset County, only a couple islanders got any water in their homes from the surging Chesapeake Bay.

Yet with the island slowly shrinking and sinking into the bay, the state is considering using $2 million of the federal storm recovery aid it's received so far to buy out islanders who want to sell their homes and move to the mainland — "out of harm's way," as one official put it.

The hardy, proud islanders, some of whose roots here go back more than 400 years, aren't exactly rushing to take the offer. Instead, some have banded together to denounce the buyout, saying that despite the challenges and risks of living 13 miles out in the bay, they're not about to give up on the low-lying archipelago of sand and marsh. To them, the state's offer to move them from the only home they've ever known is like a slap in the face.

"It could help my pocketbook, but it's not going to help my peace of mind," said John Tyler, a waterman who's lived here all his 57 years. "I love Smith Island. You can't put a dollar value on what it means to me."

You can move and let the Bay claim the island, or you can build up the island, which is what the people on Manhattan chose:

Of course, which choice you make depends on the value you place on the real estate.  Smith and Manhattan may be the polar opposites in terms of development and demography:

British settlers arrived on the island in the 17th century, arriving from Cornwall, Wales, and Dorsetshire via Virginia.A notable feature of the island is the local dialect which is like the dialects of the West Country of England and the dialect of Cornwall. The dialect contains some relict features indicative of its origins but is not, as is often claimed, a surviving pocket of Shakespearean-era English
...
The Island (actually there are several islands) are predominantly low, salt marsh with an elevation of less than four feet. There are three communities: Ewell and Rhodes Point - connected by a 1.5 mile single lane road - and Tylerton, accessible only by boat. As of the census of 2000, there were 364 people, 167 households, and 112 families residing in the CDP.
...
The median income for a household in the CDP was $26,324, and the median income for a family was $29,375. Males had a median income of $26,250 versus $28,750 for females. The per capita income for the CDP was $23,996. About 14.4% of families and 22.1% of the population were below the poverty line, including 26.9% of those under age 18 and 67.9% of those age 65 or over.

 Another reason to move them:

Smith Islanders do not have local government or police department to maintain order on the island, but each community has its own Methodist church where local decisions are made, thus providing political as well as religious cohesion.

You wouldn't want to encourage that kind of independence.