No more flood fodder

As the incidence of extreme weather has increased over recent years, people living on waterfront properties all over the world, from the New Orleans victims of Katrina to denizens of flats along the Upper Delaware River Valley, have had to face repeated tragedy. There is general agreement that the world is undergoing a period of rapid climate change that will only make these incidents more frequent.

As these repetitive disasters unfold, one point becomes increasingly clear: floodplains are made for flooding. Attempts to limit and control waterways for the sake of maintaining human habitation in these areas only lead to greater disasters further down the road. The only simple, permanent, long-run way to eliminate the recurring—and most likely, increasingly frequent—tragedies would be to eliminate development on floodplains.

Enforcing this solution is, in most cases, not possible in any reasonable or humane way for the simple reason that there are a great many people who already live on floodplains, and who cannot fairly be uprooted. In these cases, all we can do is help the sufferers upgrade construction to be more flood proof and, where possible, provide public funds to buy out properties that have been so frequently inundated that those who live there are willing and eager to leave, given the means to do so.

But in cases where no one yet lives on a floodplain, the solution is surely simpler—or should be. That this is not necessarily the case is born out by the proposed Stone Arch Estates on Campfield Flats in Tusten.

Permission to build the 23-unit development was initially given back in 1987. That approval has since lapsed, meaning the subdivision cannot be constructed without once again getting permission. But whatever sense approval may have seemed to make back then, we have surely learned something since. We have just gone through a period of two years with three so-called 100-year floods. Campsites have gone out of business, houses have been condemned, and all up and down the river people are still struggling to salvage damaged structures and belongings. Funds to help them are stretched thin. Against this background, it would be madness to set up a juicy new flood target of 23 units worth of property and people.

New York law does not permit towns to selectively forbid building on the flood plain to any one applicant. But towns can change their zoning regulations so that, going forward, nobody can do so. The time has come for Tusten—and indeed all towns with significant floodplain acreage—to make such a change.

It could be argued that townships should be no more restrictive than FEMA, which is willing to give construction on floodplains the go-ahead as long as developers build up to certain engineering standards. In particular, structures on floodplains must be built in a way that raises the living space above the 100-year flood level, for instance, on top of a crawl space that allows flood water to surge harmlessly underneath.

The problem is that, as weather extremes increase, the level reached by a 100-year flood is likely to be a moving target. Supposedly, a 100-year flood happens, on average, only once every 100 years; when you see three such floods in two years, it is legitimate to wonder whether the probabilities have changed. Tomorrow’s 100-year flood may reach as high as yesterday’s 500-year flood—indeed, the June flood already reached that extreme in some areas. Buildings constructed to FEMA’s current standards would be woefully inadequate to handle such events, but once they were built we’d be stuck with them. And let’s not forget that it is the town that would be stuck with maintenance of the road—which won’t be built on top of a crawlspace—after the developer built it.

The counties surrounding the Delaware River already have a hard enough time taking care of the residents who now live on flood plains and can’t get off. Let’s not manufacture any more victims. We cannot continue to make decisions that provide more victims, more debris and more contamination for future floods. The Town of Tusten has a fiduciary responsibility to protect the welfare of its residents, and now is the time to act to change the zoning and put an end to the cycle of destruction.

Also in this issue:

• She didn’t cook, but she sure did fill a lot of bellies

Dr. Punnybone

No Can Do