State officials and conservationists and others who worry about the consequences of easing construction rules along the North Carolina coast aren't unsympathetic to beach-front property owners who have been affected by storms and shifting sands.

Yes, it's tough when someone has invested a lot of money in a beach house only to have nature take its course and along with it that house. There are rules set on reconstruction that sometimes prevent rebuilding -- oceanfront houses must be set back a certain number of feet from the sea, and if a storm takes a house and the ocean has moved forward, the lot must remain vacant. That holds even if a beach has been renourished (sand has been added).

Those property owners who want the rules changed by the Coastal Resources Commission say they want the right to rebuild houses on beaches that have been renourished. But opponents of changing the rules say that to allow that would put those same people at risk if the beaches shifted again or a big storm came along. It's also likely that a change would spur development along renourished beaches where lots have remained vacant because of the current rules.

Were that to happen, the consequences of a hurricane or severe storms obviously would be potentially grave. More people would be at risk; more property would be destroyed.

Beyond those potential problems, changing these rules would have an immediate impact all over the coastline, where the push to renourish unstable beaches would gain steam. Either the state or beach communities would be investing no telling how many hundreds of thousands of dollars building back beaches so developers or property owners could come in and build more beach houses. Beach property along the Tar Heel coast, as buyers and sellers both know, has exploded in value in the last few years.

It may be, as Todd Miller, executive director of the environmental group the N.C. Coastal Federation, told The N&O's Wade Rawlins, that individuals could obtain waivers or variances for their homes in order to rebuild. But, Miller said rightly, "Our concern is, once we open this up, there is a lot of pressure to use renourishment to make unbuildable lots buildable on the oceanfront. When the next disaster happens, that just raises the stakes."

Many property owners aren't eager to acknowledge the risks. It hasn't been particularly unusual for someone to be cautioned by officialdom that building a beach house or a project in a certain place would be risky, and then to build it anyway. There have been controversies as well about public investment, even from beach communities that live by tourism, in renourishment that benefits private property owners.

The plain truth for generations has been that the beachfront is undergoing constant change, and in the right season it is vulnerable, quite vulnerable, to angry storms and hurricanes. For regulators, the key is to find policies that are reasonable for property owners -- but realistic in recognizing that we can't do whatever we want to do with the coastline.