At 10 p.m. Monday, Susan Brown watched the rushing water of the West River as it carved through the mountain town of Londonderry, Vermont, just yards from Jelley’s Deli Convenience Store, her mother’s market. Despite storm warnings, the river looked low so she headed home for bed. But by 2:30 a.m., the police scanner was going off. Water was rising. Roads were closing. 

“I called my mom and said I’m heading up to the store to start packing things up,” says Ms. Brown. Even though by 3 a.m. she was lifting items off the floor to countertops, it wasn’t enough. The next morning, Jelley’s Deli was under 3 feet of water. This had happened before. During Tropical Storm Irene in 2011, the store sustained $250,000 in damages. But this time, the water was 6 to 8 inches higher. 

As the water receded Tuesday, the town residents started showing up at the mud-caked, water-scoured store – dozens of them – hauling out damaged goods, emptying freezers, and offering hugs, home-baked cookies, and bottled water. Jelley’s is an institution in Londonderry. The deli and liquor market serves hundreds of lunches a day for town residents and visitors, and its owner, Bev Jelley, who has operated the store for the past 30 years, is beloved. 

Kendra Nordin Beato/The Christian Science Monitor

Bev Jelley of Londonderry, Vermont, stands in front of her store, Jelley's Deli, on July 13, 2023, after a flash flood two days earlier. Dozens of people showed up to help clean out the store. She plans to rebuild on the same spot despite the flood risks.

“We’ve been through the floods before. It’s just a lot of work, and this was a freak storm,” says Ms. Brown, debris strewn about her boots and spilling across the parking lot. “I’m sorry for my mom to go through this again, but she wants to rebuild. That’s just who she is.”

Given the unpredictability of natural disasters, alongside good planning, there’s no substitute for neighbor helping neighbor – in small-scale ways like at this market or in larger ways, supported by donations and government aid. But this week has also shown the power of readiness. Most people stayed safe, and damage would have almost surely been worse without significant post-Irene initiatives, which included removing buildings and homes from flood plains, rebuilding bridges to withstand rising river levels, and expanding drainage systems like culverts. As cleanup begins and the current levels of damages are assessed, such adaptation will likely continue.

“Irene was a very traumatic event for many, many people,” says Sue Minter, who served as the state’s Irene recovery officer in 2011. “But I think we’re also so much more prepared and ready than we ever were before. Everybody was a little bit stunned the last time. And this time people are already organizing mutual aid groups, volunteer groups, business support systems. Because we’ve been through this before, we know we need each other and we know how to work together to do unimaginable and impossible tasks. And I think that’s just the other side of that story, of being prepared, and being resilient and being there for one another.”

Riley Robinson/Staff

Vermonters survey the flood damage July 11, 2023, in Richmond, Vermont. Heavy rainfall over more than 36 hours caused severe flash flooding, most severely in central and southern Vermont. Some rivers, including the Winooski and Lamoille rivers, surpassed the levels reached during Tropical Storm Irene more than a decade earlier.

How floods surprised many

Unlike when Tropical Storm Irene hit in 2011, this time most residents didn’t think much about the slow-moving storm that marched across upstate New York on Monday, until it started dumping 6 to 9 inches across mountaintops and rivers already saturated from a wet June. Flash flood warnings swept across the state, catching residents off guard and quickly submerging the downtowns of Montpelier and Waterbury as officials anxiously watched rising levels at the Wrightsville Dam. The dam held, but flooding damages have been significant. Gov. Phil Scott submitted a request for a major disaster declaration to President Joe Biden. Crews got to work shoring up roads, removing trees, and beginning the cleanup. And across the state, fundraisers and donations have begun to pour in to help renters, homeowners, and small-business owners recover. 

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National Weather Service

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Jacob Turcotte/Staff

“We see flood-related erosion every time we get a flood, which is pretty much annually somewhere around the state, just not statewide. But it was particularly high with this event because the rain was a longer duration event over multiple days,” says Rob Evans, program manager for Vermont’s Watershed Management Division in a phone interview.

In 2011, the tropical storm resulted in three fatalities and more than $730 million in damages statewide. But in the decade since, communities across Vermont have slowly but steadily made changes to how they manage increased water flows. Instead of workers dredging rivers, which can result in faster rivers, courses were rebuilt to meander. Homes were removed from flood plains, and new building codes required electrical units to be on the first floor or higher, says Ms. Minter, who is now executive director of Capstone Community Action in Barre, Vermont. Through the Vermont Resiliency Project, a collaborative initiative on local and state levels, communities developed and implemented plans for better flood resilience.

“We did a lot to be proactive. I think it’s made a difference,” says Ms. Minter. 

Resiliency, neighborliness, and community organizing are as much a part of the ethos of Vermont as its maple syrup, ski slopes, and general stores. Each small town has its own particular interpretation of those characteristics, whether it’s showing up to help a flooded store owner in need or adapting to a changing climate.

Riley Robinson/Staff

Volunteers help Ryan McGuire (center), co-owner of Waterbury Sports, pile unsalvageable, flood-damaged skis into the bed of a pickup to haul to the dump. The shop’s basement was completely flooded during this week’s storm, Mr. McGuire says, filling with water up to just a few inches below the top step leading to the ground floor. Fortunately, they had moved most of their inventory, so the losses were relatively minimal.

A culvert makes a difference

An hour’s drive from Londonderry is Brandon, Vermont, a town seeing results of its resilience planning at work. The road between Londonderry and Brandon tells the tale of this week’s events. Pastoral scenes and wildflowers rim the roads, as do flood-carved menacing gullies in their sandy shoulders. A bridge is washed out on Cobble Ridge Road. Heavy machinery operators in Ludlow, Vermont, work to remove enormous piles of mud and rocks that slid down Okemo Mountain and wiped out its town center.

But in picturesque Brandon, where American flags snap along Main Street, things look and feel much different. The town was built along waterfalls of the swift-flowing Neshobe River in 1761. Water is central to the town’s identity. It’s been certified as having the cleanest drinking water in the state, and was once a source of mechanical power. But it also means the town has sustained periodic flooding, sometimes catastrophic. In 2011, Irene flooded the downtown, washing out roads and lifting the Brandon House of Pizza off its piers into the center of the road.

Town leaders knew something needed to be done. With assistance and guidance from the Vermont Economic Resiliency Initiative, Brandon residents taxed themselves more than $600,000 toward a $2.5 million overflow culvert project so the river would not rise up and rush over the street. It also used money from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to remove houses from the flood plain.

Millie Brigaud/The Christian Science Monitor

A view of a culvert in Brandon, Vermont, July 13, 2023. The structure ensures that water from the Neshobe River flows under the town, keeping residents and buildings safe from flooding. Local government officials say this project, completed in 2017, helped keep the town dry in this week's floods.

Those efforts have proved to be a wise investment. This week’s storm had no impact. Town Manager Seth Hopkins is quick to point out a variety of reasons, including lower rainfall than other parts of the state, as contributing factors, but it also means the new 6-foot-tall, 12-foot-wide, and 238-foot-long culvert is doing its job.

“Our river here is an alluvial river. It comes down a mountainside and then it wants to fan,” says Mr. Hopkins, sitting at a table at the Town Office building, strewn with images that show damage from Irene along with the town’s resiliency blueprint plans. The culvert helps the river stay to its natural course. “We can live in harmony with what Mother Nature is going to do, and we need to give it some space to do its thing.”

Brandon was able to build its culvert with assistance – three-quarters of its project was paid for by a state of Vermont Hazard Mitigation Grant.

Experts say the road ahead may include more of the same – with federal funding practices having evolved, since Irene, with an eye toward sustainability and climate resilience. 

Millie Brigaud/The Christian Science Monitor.

(From left) Brandon, Vermont's Rep. Stephanie Zak Jerome, Town Manager Seth Hopkins, and Deputy Town Manager Bill Moore stand around a table covered in photos of the damage that Brandon incurred after Tropical Storm Irene, July 13, 2023. The bucolic town was largely unscathed by this week's severe flooding.

“If we need a 72-inch culvert, and our rule requires the sizing to get 72 inches, FEMA will reimburse towns now to put in that 72-inch culvert,” says Mr. Evans, with the state’s Watershed Management Division. “That’s a big deal because, in light of a changing climate, we’re actually not putting in undersized infrastructure. We’re putting in the right-sized infrastructure that will hold up better over time,” he says.

Statewide, the way water flows and the responses to it are as individual as the many towns. Sometimes that means simply dealing with periodic floods.

“One of the challenges for Vermont is these narrow valleys with no place for towns and roads to move. You can make a culvert bigger, and you can build infrastructure to withstand [stronger] storms, but other than that, there’s not much you can do,” says Chris Klyza, professor of public policy, political science, and environmental studies at Middlebury College.

Kendra Nordin Beato/The Christian Science Monitor

Susan Brown stands inside Jelley's Deli in Londonderry, Vermont, and points to a wall line indicating how high the floodwaters rose earlier in the week from the nearby West River, July 13, 2023. The store, which has been operated and run by her mother, Bev Jelley, for the past 30 years, is a total loss. Jelley's suffered a similar loss after Tropical Storm Irene in 2011. The floodwaters from this week's storm were 6 to 8 inches higher than Irene's flood mark.

Neighbors giving aid

For now, this state’s deep spirit of community is operating in overdrive.

The town of Waterbury along the Winooski River has been washed out and rebuilt time and again. At Waterbury Sports, most of the inventory was, fortunately, either stored above the waterline or salvageable. But days of work lie ahead – including scrubbing down the basement to prevent mold – and volunteers have been showing up to help with all of it. 

“This community is awesome,” says co-owner Caleb Magoon. “We’re getting the help we need.” 

A few blocks away, at Stowe Street Cafe, owner Nicole Grenier has collected $12,000 in donations over the past few days to fund hot meals and coffee for neighbors affected by the flooding. People walk up to the counter and order what they want, for free. 

Riley Robinson/Staff

Nicole Grenier (right), owner of Stowe Street Cafe, and Stephanie Biczko prepare food at the cafe, July 14, 2023, in Waterbury, Vermont. The cafe has raised $12,000 in the past few days to fund meals for people affected by the recent flooding. In addition to receiving food deliveries, which are jointly organized with the local Rotary Club, neighbors can come in to the cafe and order what they’d like, free of charge.

“We just feel really compelled to advocate for doing better as a society, and making different choices, so that we can perhaps prevent some of these horrific outcomes that we’re all having to respond to,” says Ms. Grenier, who also distributed food after Tropical Storm Irene with her then-3-year-old son.

Back in Londonderry, Ms. Jelley of Jelley’s Deli arrived for another day of clearing out and throwing away, and offering cold bottles of water to two tired journalists. 

“I thought, ‘I can’t do this again,’” she says, her gray pants tucked into boots decorated with stars, clouds, and rainbows. But then she got a good night’s sleep, pulled out a fresh yellow pad and pens, and started making lists, just as she did after Irene, making calls to her insurance agent and FEMA, which is already sending a representative to tour the damage. 

Ms. Jelley plans to rebuild. 

“Knowing how much this store means to so many people, ... I knew in my heart that I would need to do it,” she says. “It’s a commitment of love.”

Staff photographer Riley Robinson and staff writer Troy Sambajon contributed reporting for this story.

For decades, nations all over the world – from Canada and France to China and South Korea – have been discharging wastewater from nuclear facilities containing small quantities of radioactive materials.

Yet today, Japan’s plan to follow suit and release highly diluted, treated water from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station – deemed safe by the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog agency – has sparked opposition from local and regional fishing communities and governments. 

That opposition stems largely from fears – rather than facts – about Japan’s release, according to experts and surveys. The concern is that public perceptions about the risks of the discharge will harm fishing communities in Japan and surrounding countries. But scientific data backs up the conclusion of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which is that Japan’s plans meet safety standards. 

Why is Japan releasing water from the nuclear power station into the sea?

When a massive 9.0 earthquake and tsunami hit Japan in 2011, the cooling system of the Fukushima plant was compromised. This led to the overheating of three reactor cores and the melting of nuclear fuel. Water inside the plant was contaminated with radioactive material. Since then, more water has been used in the cooling process, and rain and groundwater have seeped in.

The state-owned Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) developed a method for treating the water to remove most – but not all – radioactive materials. Meanwhile, the plant has accumulated more than 1 million cubic meters of wastewater in storage tanks at the site.

The wastewater storage tanks occupy a large area, which hinders the ongoing work of decommissioning the Fukushima plant. And the tanks pose a risk of additional leaks due to age or natural disasters. After spending years studying disposal options, Japan announced in 2021 a plan to release the treated water gradually into the ocean in a series of controlled discharges spread over about 30 years.

Is the release safe?

The IAEA concluded in a recent report that Japan’s plans to release the treated water are consistent with the oversight body’s safety standards. Rafael Mariano Grossi, the IAEA director general, presented the report, nearly two years in the making, to Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio in Tokyo on July 4. 

Hiro Komae/AP/File

Tanks store treated water that was used to cool down spent fuel at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan's Fukushima prefecture, Feb. 27, 2021.

“The controlled, gradual discharges of the treated water to the sea, as currently planned and assessed by TEPCO, would have a negligible radiological impact on people and the environment,” Mr. Grossi said in a foreword. The IAEA task force included agency specialists as well as “internationally recognised nuclear safety experts from eleven countries.” He stressed that the IAEA will continue its independent safety assessments throughout the discharge process, with an on-site presence and live online monitoring.

The main radioactive element in the water is tritium, a naturally occurring hydrogen isotope. “Everyone is exposed to small amounts of tritium every day,” according to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and no technology currently exists to remove the tritium from the water.

Simulations of Japan’s discharge plan showed that it was only within 3 kilometers of the station that tritium concentrations measured higher than those found naturally in seawater – beyond that, the water was no different from seawater anywhere else in the world. “If safety standards were not complied with, the Japanese would be the first ones to suffer from the consequences,” said a Japanese government official in a June briefing.

Japanese officials and outside experts say the radiation level of the treated, diluted water will be low – “a few thousandths of the dose received in a single dental x-ray,” according to a government briefing on the Fukushima plan. The level of tritium will be far below the World Health Organization limit for drinking water.

Why are some countries and fishing communities opposed?

While the G7 nations have backed the IAEA’s independent review of the safety of Japan’s plan, other countries, such as China and members of the Pacific Islands Forum, say Japan should take more time to study other options for dealing with the wastewater. 

Ahn Young-joon/AP

Protesters in Seoul, South Korea, stage a rally against Japan's decision to release highly diluted wastewater from the Fukushima nuclear power plant, July 8, 2023.

Japanese government officials say one reason they chose the sea discharge option is that many other countries around the world already discharge tritium in liquid waste from nuclear power plants into rivers and seas. In fact, the concentrations of tritium in water released from plants in China and South Korea are several times higher than the concentrations found in Japan’s plan.

Some environmental and marine groups oppose the plan. In the United States, the National Association of Marine Laboratories (NAML) said late last year that Japan’s scientific data was inadequate, and argued that dilution of the treated water may not stop radioactive elements such as tritium from accumulating in marine life.

Yet scientists with expertise in radioactive pollution disagree. Japan’s release of treated discharge water is “of zero significance for the health of the Pacific Ocean,” says Jim Smith, a professor of environmental science at the University of Portsmouth who has spent 30 years studying the environmental consequences of radioactive pollutants, including from the Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear accidents. “It doesn’t bioaccumulate,” he says, citing long-term studies.

Meanwhile, fishing communities in Japan and South Korea are concerned that consumer fears of contaminated seafood will impact their livelihoods. Surveys by local media of Fukushima residents, for example, show that more than 70% are concerned about reputational damage, stigma, and economic impacts from the release of the water – rather than health effects. Concerns about reputational damage are justified, says Dr. Smith, who is the lead author of the book “Chernobyl: Catastrophe and Consequences.”

“The fishermen know very well that the perception of the risk will be really serious,” he says. “We’ve seen the same thing with Chernobyl – it’s that association with a terrible event” that creates fears, he says, coupled with misinformation.

To counter this, Japan has committed to conduct and publish regular sampling data to look for tritium in seafood caught in the Pacific east of Japan.

Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters

Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama speaks to a reporter at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, July 13, 2023. He is holding up confirmations at the Pentagon over its abortion policy.

As a college football coach in the 1990s, Tommy Tuberville wasn’t afraid to take risks. His Ole Miss roster had been battered by NCAA sanctions, so he compensated with aggressive tactics – fake punts, onside kicks, trick plays. Mr. Tuberville’s reputation earned him a nickname: “The Riverboat Gambler.”

Now, as a first-term senator from Alabama, Mr. Tuberville has taken a similar strategy.

Since February, he’s blocked the confirmation of hundreds of Pentagon officials, protesting a Department of Defense policy ensuring access to abortion – one the department says is necessary to retain personnel. 

Key positions may soon lack a Senate-confirmed successor, meaning that whoever fills them will have limited authority. Those positions include more than half of the eight-member Joint Chiefs of Staff, a board of America’s top military officials. 

This week for the first time in more than 100 years, the Marine Corps does not have a confirmed commandant. Meanwhile, the United States is supporting Ukraine’s self-defense, a renaissance in European security, and increased competition with China. It’s a hard part of the game to play without a full roster, the Pentagon argues. 

Last night, the GOP-controlled House passed its annual military spending bill – the National Defense Authorization Act – with an amendment that would end the abortion policy Mr. Tuberville objects to. That amendment, among others, makes the current bill a nonstarter in the Democratic-controlled Senate, with its 60-vote threshold. 

The military has participated in the culture wars before, on issues of race, gender, and sexuality. But a sense of political neutrality has long been a fundamental part of its mission, and both parties in Congress traditionally line up behind the military. Its authority relies on the perception that it won’t become a partisan cudgel, and it is still the institution that enjoys the highest confidence among Americans. 

Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP

Gen. Eric Smith, acting commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps, applauds during a relinquishment of office ceremony for Marine Corps Gen. David Berger, July 10, 2023, at the Marine Barracks in Washington. General Smith has been nominated to be the next leader, but he hasn't been confirmed by the Senate.

But as the Tuberville hold and this week’s House vote show, it’s becoming harder for the military to stay separate from politics, especially given Republican complaints about “wokeness.” One amendment in the newly passed House defense bill does away with diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in the military.

In a previous generation, politics in the military used to take the form of officials riding the armed forces’ coattails, says Risa Brooks, a professor who studies civilian-military politics at Marquette University. “Now, the form it’s taking is trying to use the military as a wedge issue.” 

There’s a phrase for that in Washington: a political football. 

Roots of the dispute

The Tuberville dispute started last October. Roe v. Wade had ended in the summer, and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin released a memo on abortion. Service members stationed in states that didn’t permit abortion could have their travel costs reimbursed and receive 21 days of administrative absence to end a pregnancy. 

The rationale was that abortion was no longer nationally protected, and service members don’t generally get to choose where they work. The department wouldn’t pay for abortions, but would help facilitate them. The Department of Justice, in an October opinion, decided that the defense department was acting within its authority. 

The GOP immediately objected, and on Dec. 9, Senator Tuberville wrote a letter to the secretary, pledging to hold promotions if the Department of Defense proceeded with its policy. In February, the blockade began. 

No one senator can halt nominations entirely, but he can make the process so time-intensive that it would overwhelm all other work – an estimated 668 hours in total to confirm the over 250 promotions currently jammed up. By the end of the year, the number of leadership positions in limbo could be 650, according to the Pentagon.

So far, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has refused to confirm any positions individually. Instead, the New York Democrat is hoping that the traffic will clear, and is calling on senior Republicans to find an off ramp.

Morgan Murphy, Mr. Tuberville’s former national security adviser in the Senate, doesn’t expect that to work. 

“Every other senator knows that [Mr. Tuberville] is 1,000% against this abortion policy,” he says. 

Mr. Murphy, like his former boss, argues that Secretary Austin violated the Hyde Amendment, which bans the military from funding or performing abortions with few exceptions. The secretary of defense is a political appointee, he says. It’s Congress’ job to change laws. 

“I think it’s fair to ask questions – how does this policy not violate the Hyde Amendment?” says Katherine  Kuzminski, a senior fellow who studies politics and the military at the Center for New American Security, a think tank. 

Many officers in limbo

What Ms. Kuzminski doesn’t think is fair is holding up hundreds of military personnel for a policy they had nothing to do with. 

“They are being held hostage over a fight between executive branch appointees and Congress,” she says. 

This is not the first time this tactic has been used – something Mr. Murphy points out. Other senators, from Illinois Democrat Tammy Duckworth to Missouri Republican Josh Hawley, have blocked Pentagon nominees in the past few years. The difference is their blockades were temporary. Mr. Tuberville’s is sticking. 

“His goal posts change continuously,” says one Democratic Senate aide, who requested anonymity to speak freely. 

There appear to be only two paths forward, according to Mr. Tuberville. The Pentagon could change its policy or Congress could pass a law codifying or nullifying it. 

The first is highly unlikely – lest the defense department incentivize holds like this in the future by rewarding this one. On the second front, the House version of the NDAA yesterday included an amendment striking down the policy. But it has no future in the Senate

Meanwhile, Pentagon officials are fretting that some of their top officials will serve in an “acting” basis, meaning they can carry out their predecessor’s directives but can’t set new ones themselves. “We have strong deputies, but at the same time they don’t have the same level of experience going forward,” Gen. Charles Q. Brown, nominated to lead the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the Senate Armed Services Committee this week. 

Andrew Harnik/AP/File

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. speaks about U.S. defense strategy at the Brookings Institution in Washington, Feb. 13, 2023.

General Brown, like other Defense Department officials, warned that this standoff will harm military readiness at a crucial moment, and perhaps hurt retention. Many of the officers stuck in limbo have families, who now can’t resettle or find schools because the promotions haven’t gone through. 

“Holding up this many nominations has created an unprecedented level of disruption across the military,” writes Heidi Urben, a professor at Georgetown University and retired Army colonel, in an email. 

President Joe Biden said yesterday he was willing to meet with Mr. Tuberville if it would help resolve the hold. Secretary Austin called the senator, who didn’t accept and then later called back for five minutes, according to the Democratic aide. 

At least it’s a start, says Mr. Murphy.

“That’s where there’ll be an off ramp,” he says. “If there is an off ramp.”

Clutching her plastic spade, Willow skips along the beach, followed by her grandmother, Gay Brice. As Ms. Brice holds out a bucket, Willow digs deep into the sand, a smile on her face. It’s the electric smile of a 2-year-old playing on the beach on a sun-dazzled day.

Ms. Brice, a local hairdresser, hasn’t forgotten that feeling. “I love the openness, this scenery,” she says, gazing at a shoreline bisected by a pier poking into the blue-green sea. Then she turns back to watching her granddaughter whom she’s minding for the day.

This pebbly beach on England’s southern coast isn’t exactly teeming on a midweek afternoon. Schools aren’t out for summer yet. But when the school term does end later this month, many families will head not to English seaside towns, but to resorts across southern Europe in search of sun, sea, and sand.

Though they enjoyed a brief renaissance during the pandemic when travel abroad was limited and viewed as risky, towns like Worthing are not seeing the crowds they used to. And so, in order to thrive, they are thinking harder about how to offer more than sandcastles. That may depend at least in part on another pandemic side effect: Remote office work and hybrid working hours make an hour-plus train commute to London, like that from Worthing, less burdensome.

“Rather than still trying to go down the route of being a beach-based holiday,” says Anya Chapman, a professor of tourism management at Bournemouth University, “the resorts are having to adapt.”

“People just had to get out of the city”

Britain more or less invented the beach holiday, starting in the late 18th century when sea bathing was touted by royalty as a cure-all. In time, trains would bring workers from industrial cities in search of sea breezes to dozens of purpose-built resort towns, such as Scarborough in the northeast. When its 365-room Grand Hotel opened in 1867, it was the largest hotel in Europe. Towns competed to build the longest piers and widest promenades. Funfairs, theaters, and game arcades jostled for attention.

But the availability of cheap package tours starting in the 1970s hollowed out domestic seaside resorts, which proved unable to compete with foreign destinations for sunshine. Hotel stays and visitor spending slumped. Blackpool, a resort in the northwest that once attracted 17 million visitors a year from cities like Liverpool and Manchester, saw arrivals slump to 11 million by 1999. Blackpool and other similar towns became bywords for deprivation and despair. In 2016, coastal communities were among the biggest backers of Brexit and a break with Europe.

Then came a pandemic that shut down international borders and forced people to stay home. Between lockdowns and with foreign travel largely unavailable, Britons flocked to domestic destinations during public holidays, including seaside towns they had overlooked before. “COVID was a catalyst,” says Kenny Dutt, a chef and restaurant owner. “People just had to get out of the city.”

Simon Montlake/The Christian Science Monitor

A couple walk on the beach by Worthing Pier. English seaside towns built in an era of mass tourism have suffered from decades of decline due to competition from European beach resorts.

The “staycation” summer of 2021 was the high-water mark for media hype in the United Kingdom about the rebirth of domestic holidays for a generation reared on foreign travel. But even then, the numbers didn’t add up, says Professor Chapman. Domestic tourist spending actually declined overall during the pandemic, since some people were unwilling or unable to travel, and those who did often avoided hotels and restaurants for fear of exposure to COVID-19. 

Now that the world has opened up, British travelers are back on the beaches of Italy and Spain, and English seaside resorts are mostly back where they started before the pandemic.

Except, that is, for the arrival of newcomers. Worthing has seen an influx of homeowners from London – known as DFLs, short for people who are “down from London” – drawn by affordable property and outdoor lifestyles. Recruitment website Indeed ranked Worthing in 2022 as the U.K.’s top “Zoom town” based on growth in job listings with remote or hybrid options.

This demographic shift in a town that in 2016 had one of the country’s oldest populations – England’s coastal resorts have long been popular with retirees – has had a political resonance: The town council is now run by the Labour Party after nearly two decades of Conservative Party control.

Rosie Sanders, a teacher, moved down from London before the pandemic. She loves to walk on the beach, even in winter, and says the town is becoming more vibrant as more young families arrive, mostly DFLs like her. “I think with the cost of living at the moment, when the weather’s good, this place does well,” she says.

Fewer tourists, more commuters

For tourists, Worthing offers a mix of cultural walking tours, side trips to the South Downs national park, and arts and crafts. Most visitors are day-trippers or weekend holiday-makers. Many still come to walk the coastal promenade, dip in the sea, eat ice cream, and soak up the kitsch of an English seaside town: rock candy, joke postcards, silly hats.

“It’s got a lot to shout about,” says Mr. Dutt, who opened his first restaurant here after winning Britain’s “Masterchef” in 2018 and is a booster of his adopted hometown. “Seaside towns have been massively undervalued [and] forgotten about.”

Behind the pastel beachfront blocks are pockets of deep poverty, which Worthing has in common with resorts dotted up and down England’s coastline. Seaside towns tend to have lower employment rates, slower economic growth, and populations in worse health with lower life expectancy than the national average, according to government data. Worthing, a town of 110,000, isn’t at the bottom of the list, but it shares some of the same issues.

Matthew Potter runs a food bank that opens three days a week, serving around 150 families. It began as a mutual aid group at the start of the pandemic. “It was meant to be short term, just to get through the first few months,” he says. Now he wants to find premises so that more donated food can be stored and distributed to those who need it.

He says that 40% of recipients are working full time yet are struggling to keep up with the cost of living. “Just the sheer thing of not being able to feed your children is traumatic,” he says. That house prices are rising as DFLs discover Worthing is adding to the squeeze, as renters on low incomes fear being priced out, says Mr. Potter. “The problem here is low wages.”

At the end of the pier is Perch, an elegant restaurant that opened in April 2022 after a $2 million refurbishment of a former disco. From its curved windows, the sea glistens along a coastline of headlands and bays. A row of wind turbines turns on the horizon.

Owner Alex Coombes is among the newcomers to Worthing, though he moved from Hove, another coastal town. When he opened Perch last year after pandemic delays and cost overruns, he had expected to close over winter and take a skiing vacation. But demand was so strong that he stayed open most days. “We were full every weekend,” he says.

Like most seafront businesses, he still depends on visitors coming to spend money, in addition to those who live nearby, and he knows that Worthing isn’t Mallorca. “This is a good weekend trip. A holiday is when you go to an airport – that’s our perception of a holiday,” he says.

Economic head winds

Professor Chapman says now that vacationers can jet off to warmer climes, English resorts need to repackage their Victorian heritage. “The thing the U.K. resorts have, and is often neglected and overlooked, is the heritage,” she says. “This was the first place in the world for mass tourism.”

Still, it takes investment to revive towns, and that is in short supply in the U.K., which is struggling with high inflation and lackluster growth. A dedicated fund for coastal revival launched in 2015 has been replaced by a national leveling-up program for all deprived areas. For every Worthing that has pockets of gentrification, there are others with nothing much to dangle for tourists.

And in Worthing, the economic head winds are blowing. Mr. Dutt closed his second restaurant in April, which he had opened in an up-and-coming neighborhood. Mr. Coombes says he’s bracing for September when his customers start feeling the pinch from higher U.K. mortgage rates.

At the seaside, seasons matter. “When the sun stops shining,” he warns, “we’ll see the slowdown.”

AP

People buy rice and other items at a market in Karachi, Pakistan, July 13.

With global public debt hitting a record $92 trillion last year, it is worth noting what is happening at Pakistan’s agency for tax enforcement. To assist homeowners in being honest about their taxes, the agency plans to increase the appraised value of homes by 13% to 15% in August – part of a plan to increase total tax revenue by nearly a third. For one of the world’s most debt-burdened nations, this is the latest effort to curb one of Pakistan’s more corrupt practices – tax avoidance, including below-market house appraisals.

It is also an example of the many reforms that the South Asian country has lately promised in order to receive loans from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) to avoid a debt default.

With a debt burden close to the size of its economic output, Pakistan loses an estimated $3.6 billion a year to tax evaders – enough to be free of foreign debt if the money stayed in the system. The “whole nation has to move towards a tax culture,” Ahsan Iqbal, a top economic minister, said after the IMF approved a $3 billion rescue loan for Pakistan on July 12. “Everyone has to stop tax evasion.”

Nearly half of humanity, or about 3.3 billion people, live in countries that spend more on paying back debt than on funding education or health care, according to a new United Nations report. To reduce Pakistan’s debt, warned IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva in February, “those that are making good money ... need to contribute to the economy” by paying their taxes.

The IMF, which is the world’s lender of last resort for countries in financial crisis, has only recently begun to consistently attach anti-graft conditions on its loans. Its latest loan to Pakistan, for example, includes a plan to curb theft in the power sector. When the IMF began to focus on corruption in 2018, then-IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde said the effort would help “harness the immense power of sunlight to put the global economy on a healthier and more sustainable path.”

Pakistan has been receiving IMF help since 1958. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif says he prays this latest loan will be the last one, adding, “It is my faith that Pakistan will progress and no one can stop it.”