Bay St. Louis, Miss, is a coastal resort town is on the front line of a project to gauge support for a mass federal buyout of 17,000 homes near Mississippi's Katrina-ravaged shore. This could become the nation's most significant attempt to radically reconfigure coastal communities -- converting huge swaths of flood-prone residential lots to public wetlands. Until now, the Army Corps of Engineers has reserved buyouts for areas prone to river flooding. Some people, such as Susan I. Rees, the director of the corps project, believe the current assessment is the beginning of a serious national debate on whether Americans should retreat from the coasts. The costs and risks of future flooding are simply too great, they say -- especially if, as many believe, sea levels are rising and hurricanes are starting to get stronger.

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