Noah’s Ark
Jun 29th, 2006 at 1:00 pm by Susie
If I could just take a minute here to comment on the massive floods this week…
Yes, the weather has a lot to do with it - but so does development. I covered this as a reporter and was surprised to learn that even a driveway can produce millions of gallons of storm runoff.
There’s a little something in Pennsylvania called, I think, the Stormwater Development Act, passed in 1987, as I recall. Anyway, the Act called for local municipalities to do stormwater studies on all local streams and floodplains, and then produce legislation to control development accordingly. Because flooding, when you get right down to it, is hardly ever unpredictable.
As you can imagine, this wasn’t too popular with the politicians. How were they going to get around it? Simple. They simply, uh, forgot to do the studies. How can you plan the development if you don’t know the likely results? Brilliant, in that amoral way.
This is one I won’t pin exclusively on the Republicans, though. This is a generic political issue having more to do with campaign cash than political parties.
Yes, Lawrence, KS has some streets that flood three feet in a nice downpour due to development by the University just uphill fom them. Consider the consequenses? Are you kidding?
Actually FEMA and PA have done things to take care of the problem. Their are flood control prijets which have been implemented in North east Pa from after Agnes to the present, The most recent is buying out people living on a low bank on the susquehanna and turning it into a park with an area for
events like POW WOWS etc. It would have been much worse had it not been for these efforts. This is an event like Katrina was for New Orleans. Unfortunately we will see more and more of these “once in a lifetime events” due to global warming!
The NE is flooded and the Prez is at Graceland. Wow what an asshole.