When Jackson County Circuit Court in Mississippi convenes this Thursday, it will hear a novel theory about the federal government’s thoughts on flood-prone property. According to the attorneys for Ocean Springs Islands RV Resort (OSRV), an RV park is precisely the kind of development federal flood officials recommend for flood zones, because those RVs can scoot out of there ahead of any storms—like, say, Hurricane Georges in 1998, which rolled over the site in question with a 10-foot storm surge and dropped up to 30 inches of rain on the state.
That bizarre assertion, attributed in a story in the Biloxi Sun Herald to court documents filed by attorneys Amy St. Pé and Josh Danos, flies directly counter to Federal Emergency Management Agency guidelines that discourage any built-up development in flood-prone areas. The article, alas, does not cite the attorneys’ sources for their claim, so one can only hope Judge Keith Miller insists they do so when they appear before him. That could make for an interesting conversation in Washington, D.C.
At stake, meanwhile, is the most ambitious RV park ever proposed for Mississippi, a 476-site monster development scattered among four clumps of land connected by causeways across a whole lot of swamp. Also in the plans are 20 rentable Airstreams along the waterfront, 16 houses on stilts, a clubhouse, a lazy river, pools and two “bayou houses,” whatever those are. The whole complex would be accessed via Beachview Drive, a narrow two-lane road that connects the two halves of Gulf Park Estates, which are split by an arm of the Davis Bayou Coastal Preserve. All in all, hardly the kind of project or the place for a hasty evacuation ahead of a fast-moving hurricane.
But it’s been a quarter-of-a-century since the last time that happened in a big way, and memories are short. A generation after Hurricane Georges swept ashore as a Level 2 storm and obliterated what had been the Pine Island Golf Course, the 400 acres now being eyed for RV fun in the sun are still vacant, a 2006 plan to build more than a thousand condos, townhouses and villas on the property abandoned for perhaps obvious reasons. None of that deterred Adam Dial from buying the property a year ago March, however, then convincing county officials last December to approve a special use exception to its planned unit development (PUD) zoning.
This week’s court hearing will hear from local opponents, who claim the special use exception violates the PUD provision specifically prohibiting RVs “for living purposes.” St. Pé and Danos, on the other hand, argue that “the entire purpose of the special use exception is to allow the use of property that is otherwise not permitted in a zoning district”—in essence, a get-out-of jail free card that enables the county board of supervisors to ignore its own rules. And as reported in the Sun Herald, it’s precisely because of the site’s flooding potential that the board granted the special-use exception. Local residents, on the other hand, contend that the county has violated its own zoning laws
“In the present case, OSRV bought a piece of land for an RV park that does not allow RV parks,” plaintiffs’ attorney Michael Fondren has argued in court filings. “OSRV caused their own dilemma” of what to do with the property.
Legal zoning arguments aside, the two sides have been throwing out the standard tropes about the impact of such a huge project in the middle of a residential community. On the development side, there are claims about the economic boost the local area will receive, the creation of 25 or more jobs, the increase in the county’s tax base and the creation of “one more unique, authentic option for travelers that want to come check out Mississippi.” On the other side are fears of increased traffic on inadequate roads, a hit to local property values and a steady incursion of strangers—“just people who are nomads,” as one local resident told TV station WLOX. “People who live out of their campers and trailers. Why would you want to have RVs parking out on swamp land?”
Thus far, however, there has been remarkably little discussion about the elephant in the room, perhaps because local residents are just as much on the firing line as any potential RV campers: a 2024 hurricane season that the National Hurricane Center says may exceed even the records set in 2020, and every expectation that subsequent years will get worse. Best not to think about what kind of dent that will make in the local economy, or how hundreds of RVers would contend with an exodus of local residents all jamming the same meager roads as they try to get out of Dodge.
Some ideas are beyond stupid, and this one’s right up there.
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