AS OUR THOUGHTS turn to spring and summer, concerns among the nation’s insurers that major hurricane activity this year could devastate New England’s picturesque beachfront properties continue to grow.

Some companies have addressed this growing concern by increasing their rates, causing the cost of home insurance to skyrocket along New England’s coastal areas. Others have simply stopped insuring homeowners on these high-risk shorelines, forcing residents to seek coverage through government-funded insurance plans. Unfortunately, the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) is nearly bankrupt.

Even more unfortunately, Congress is considering a bailout for insurers and a broken environmental policy — a new catastrophic-insurance proposal that would make it easier for taxpayers to cover the losses of homeowners and businesses in areas that sit in destruction’s path, but would do so through a system that spreads the risk among all the taxpayers, not just those who made the choice to move to ocean-front property or the decision to commercially develop the coastline.

The Homeowners’ Defense Act currently up for vote in the Senate promises to bring property-insurance relief to homeowners in disaster-prone zones by essentially subsidizing their insurance costs. The plan would pool state catastrophe-risk insurance for natural disasters, and require the government to fund low-cost loans — paid for by our tax dollars — to those states that cannot foot the bill. Such legislation would force all residents, including those who don’t live along the shore, to shoulder the cost of coastal mansions repeatedly built and rebuilt in harm’s way.

Under the act, the federal government would provide below-market loans and up to $200 billion a year in financial assistance to state insurance and reinsurance programs to cover the costs of catastrophe. Offering low-rate government loans as a means of relief from high premiums will do little to promote public safety and responsible building and land development.

In fact, such a program would not put a cap on federal funding, thus making the liability to the taxpayers potentially limitless.

Such a proposal is both an environmental and public-policy nightmare. Placing the burden on taxpayers and dangling incentives in front of land developers along America’s coastline is not the right course of action.

We should instead encourage Congress to initiate strategies that encourage risk prevention, rather than ones that merely promote solutions to the problems of recovery after catastrophe.

Offering real incentives to those who responsibly reinforce their homes or relocate to less-sensitive areas is a step in the right direction. As an active member of the environmental community for most of my life, and as the former president of an urban neighborhood association, I believe that we need comprehensive reform of the NFIP and we need to address consumer issues related to the cost of homeowners and business insurance.

Sen. Chris Dodd (D.-Conn.) has offered a proposal that addresses market-based solutions to coastal-insurance issues by providing a government program directed at consumers, not insurers. His proposed legislation would make available loans and grants for homeowners to strengthen their homes — a much more sensible solution than paying them to rebuild in the same high-risk zones that are repeatedly in danger of wind and flood damage.

Lawmakers might also consider offering government assistance only to those already living along the coast and in real financial need, rather than those developing or rebuilding new property in storm-prone regions. This will not only discourage risky new development and construction in environmentally sensitive areas, but will also better enable those individuals to buy private insurance for natural catastrophes.

I urge our representatives and senators to support responsible prevention strategies that protect our environment, while also preventing unlimited taxpayer support for coastline development. Let’s put an end to the ever-increasing catastrophic-insurance rates by putting property mitigation rewards back in the hands of the American public rather than crossing our fingers that some trickle-down economics will lower coastal insurance costs for a select few.

Liz Cameron is a former officer of Ecology Action and a former president of the Summit Neighborhood Association, in Providence.