"SOCASTEE, S.C. — On the day she would finally move to higher ground, Terri Straka awoke in the neighborhood where she had lived for three decades, but a place steadily becoming less recognizable.

“No Trespassing” signs adorned the lawns of other flood-prone houses whose owners had already taken government buyouts. Storage pods sat in the driveways of neighbors who would soon follow. In one yard, a sign warned would-be house hunters, “Don’t buy in the swamp.”

“It’s like a death,” Straka, 52, said as she surveyed the two packed U-Haul trucks parked out front. “I didn’t have any intentions of leaving. This place is my heritage.”

The transformation unfolding in this one corner of South Carolina embodies the quandary that a growing number of communities around the nation face — and will face in the years ahead."

Brady Dennis reports for the Washington Post October 25, 2022. [2]