The Unbuilding of Seawalls

For sixty years the Kettle Coast defended itself with a wall of ferroconcrete and pride. Now the seas have stabilized, the Terran Restoration Mandate wants the barriers retired to reopen the tidal marshes, and the coastal cities that paid for them are refusing to be undefended twice. Complicating it: the inland retreat towns, built during the panic, would lose their reason to exist if the coast is judged safe again. Mayors, Mandate stewards, and a generation that remembers the flooding are all arguing about what safety is worth, and who gets to declare the emergency over.