According to Northampton County's Hazard Mitigation Plan, "Flooding is the most significant natural hazard in the Lehigh Valley." In Northampton County, it occurs during all seasons. In Easton, 433 residents and 21.8% of the City are already in the flood plain. Yet there are only 79 flood insurance policies in place. The hotel at which the Da Vinci Science Center has been proposed has been identified on the county's hazard mitigation plan as the most at-risk property, with 43.7% structure damage and 56.8% content damage in the event of a flood. The plan strongly recommends restrictive rezoning in the river corridor, along with enhanced floodplain requirements.
Between 1955 and today, Easton has experienced eight floods. Four of these have occurred since 2004. Three of the last four flooding events have been 100-year floods. Quite obviously, climate change is having an impact locally.
When she was Easton's Planning Director, Becky Bradley coaxed the City into moving voluntarily into a 500-year floodplain. Thus enables the City to regulate property that is 15-30 above what us called the base flood elevation. In addition, the sewage pumping station was elevated two floors. Finally, a mobile station has been set up for public works, the one department the City needs most in the event of a flood.
Are these positive measures enough? I think not. Hurricane Harvey actually bent the earth's crust, and the storms in this area are simply more intense than they were 20 or 30 years ago. With just 18 inches of water, cars begin to float and can cause damage. Just an inch or two of water can sweep a person away.
The $130 million DaVinci Science Center is planned near the junction of both the Lehigh and Delaware river, that is most likely to be inundated and damaged in the next major flooding event. Even if the property can be raised through fill and freeboards, it will send water cascading onto other properties. I am hard pressed to think of a worse location.
Just wait a few years. It will become an aquarium without having to spend a cent of public money.
Easton Mayor Sal Panto has already committed $30 million to this project, and Northampton County is being dunned for $15 million.
I could go for this if there were sharks with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads. Otherwise, no.
44 comments:
Plans for Uncle Sal's Fish Tank should be drowned before they see the light of day. Absolute waste of taxpayer money.
It would be a lot less trouble and inconvenience if they loaded up a truck with all that money and dumped it directly into the river. Why waste time with construction?
also.....Sharknado. 'nuff said.
What a waste of money. Let Easton fund the whole project, after all, they keep voting this carbon-copy Pawlowski in.
Surf's up.
I love the programs the Davinci center puts on, but do not think this postage stamp parcel is the best location. One would think the study would have involved site selection. What did the area look like during hurricane Agnes?
7:02 am has the right idea, there is a story floating around that chacter of the 5th floor just tryed to make the 4th into a aquarium to float and destroy paperwork and money documents away in this flood. It is one thing to steal money, than a whole other thing to steal money from a poverty destined grant process set up many years ago.
How come this story isn't a headline story in The Morning Call?
Much of the Lehigh Valley is built on areas that really are owned by our waterways. We borrow these areas and tend to forget how quickly they can flood. It may take 2 years, 20 years or maybe 100 years. The waterways do not cause catastrophes, we do. This periodic flooding existed long before any talk about climate change. While we run around predicting the sky is falling we forget that much of our misery could be mitigated without the projections of computer models. Look back at our history and no need to have complex studies. Talk to your grandparents, look at newspaper archives and scrapbooks kept in peoples attics. No costly studies needed, just common sense and the reining in of the grandiose ideas of politicians and of get rich quick speculators. Think a better place for this aquarium is in the outskirts of Houston. Now that is an area with great future planning!
We haven't had a 100 year flood since 55. But given what 04 05 and 06 looked like downtown the possibility of a 500 year flood should kill the aquarium idea.
We don't think Easton has to worry about hurricanes and flooding. Never gonna happen.
The County Executive and the 4 Republicans that are up for re-election are in on this and have had secret meetings to fund it with hotel tax monies.
You have the power at the poles to make a difference and stop spending money on nothing but a sal panto dream.
we will soon see if you really care about what goes on at the lower levels of government or if you are all just full of Shi*
If you look at the history of Atlantic hurricanes, there is no "uptick" in the number of hurricanes in the past decade as a result of global warming. The "power" of the hurricane may be increased because of the warmth of the water, but I haven't seen any scientific reports that states that (however, it seems plausible).
http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/E11.html
The aquarium is a great project. It will be raised and built above the flood elevation. It is an investment that will produce revenue many times the initial cost
8:41 - The intensity or severity of storms, drought, etc are all amplified by global warming (air and ocean water temperature increases). We are burning carbon that was sequestered over 100s of millions of years (carbon / fossil fuels) and therefore adding greenhouse gasses (CO2, Methane etc) to the atmosphere at an unnaturally fast rate. Thus, altering the balance in a short time rather than over a millions of years as nature would.
Northampton County Council should asked for the money back if this project will continue to be build in the floodplain. Any council member that still approves the project as planned should be removed from office.
@8:52 (panto), piss off...
The Salquarium will never recover its costs. Stop it now, or be burdened with a white elephant in 10 years.
Bernie:
You do bring-up the ever important, compound-complex problem of balancing legacy development, property rights and environmental management in the interest of the public health, safety and welfare. And we need, as a nation and as a region, to have this conversation in light of Harvey and Irma.
In fact, Lehigh and Northampton Counties were just awarded FEMA/PEMA monies for the update of the Regional Hazard Mitigation Plan. The LVPC will be the consultant and we are rolling out the update process next month with a completion date of October 2018. Since the current plan was written, FEMA on the heels of Sandy and Katrina, has changed the requirements of these plans to not only address emergency response and individual hazards but, land use planning and resiliency --- this will help address some of the complexities in our region. However, we have significant legacy issues, in some cases 200-year old ones (like multiple city downtowns in floodplains) that will need to be managed through zoning and land use laws locally.
In addition, the LVPC just completed the update of the Monocacy Creek Stormwater Management Plan in partnership with the City of Bethlehem, the 12 other communities in the watershed and both counties. This plan is in the adoption process currently and is expected to be enacted by all units of government by the beginning of next year. This is important, because it includes an update to the regional stormwater management ordinance that we are hoping to apply to the entire region. We simultaneously drafted Green Infrastructure Guidelines for the region, that we hope to distribute as the Monocacy Stormwater Management Plan is adopted.
Furthermore, the Lehigh Valley is the only region in the Commonwealth that has a plan for all (in our case 16) watersheds and maintains full-time water engineering staff. We also, are the only region in the Commonwealth that reviews every development project against stormwater management standards. This is critical for the avoidance of development-related disasters (like in Houston) to protect water quality, manage the environment and bove all protect human life. This is part and parcel to the LVPC's model floodplain ordinance which we updated right after I joined the LVPC Team in 2013-2014.
LVPC, along with the County Planing Director's Association of Pennsylvania developed an Integrated Water Resources Management education guide and are now refining best practies case studies for release later this year. We took this work to the Governor who ultimately has asked DEP to update the State Water Plan (they are forming the Committees for the update now).
The State Planning Board also, issued a recommendations at the end of July relating to infrastructure and efficient governance, which is inextricably linked to disaster response. We are watching and participating very closely via the Governor's Advisory Board on Community Development, on where these recommendations ultimately go.
All-in-all our region is better prepared than most because of collaboration of the of LVPC but, our emergency management teams, municipal governments and counties. These partnerships are unheard of in most places in our Nation and something that I am particularly proud of. Nevertheless, we will as a Lehigh Valley Team continue to work to protect the public health, safety and welfare and evolve our thinking as we learn more from disasters like Harvey and Irma, prepare for an new climate future and discover ways to remain resilient in light of natural hazards.
8:11, Try being more clear. I have no idea what you are saying. You ask why you don't see front page stories about your very sloppy attempt to claim some sort of scandal. Part of the reason is people like you, who never really say anything.
I think the hurricanes this year will impact this project. Katrina broke the government's flood insurance program and Irma is Katrina's stronger, angrier kid sister.
The feds always tighten up floodplain insurance and laws after a disaster. Of course Congress will be eager to unwind it all like they did after Katrina and Sandy but floodplain development will probably get prohibitively expensive if we have to rebuild Houston AND Miami.
"The aquarium is a great project. It will be raised and built above the flood elevation. It is an investment that will produce revenue many times the initial cost"
Here's the thing. Thanks to climate change, we no longer really know what the flood elevation is. So your bluster is misplaced. Before doing anything near the river in a flood-prone area, there should be careful study by flood engineers. Also, raising elevation and using freeboards just sends the flooding somewhere else. Finally, this may or may not be a good business idea. I have seen no independent analysis. I have just heard from cheerleaders. I know that public aquariums will fail unless they are able to start with no debt. Da Vinci will not have that luxury.
Bernie O'Hare said:
"...the storms in this area are simply more intense than they were 20 or 30 years ago."
No, they're not, and it has nothing to do with "climate change".
We've simply built up more, both in and around floodplains. There are more impervious surfaces that don't absorb the rainfall. When large storms come, the water has fewer and fewer places to go without causing damage. While we do our best to plan for this, there is still a cumulative effect.
You are correct in saying that "...raising elevation and freeboards just sends the flooding somewhere else."
You're nuts. The intensity of Harvey and Irma has nothing to do with how built up Easton is. It has everything to do with the warmth of the Atlantic Ocean.
Bernie O'Hare said:
" this may or may not be a good business idea. I have seen no independent analysis."
The Easton site was selected because Easton (and Northampton County) were the ones willing to put up the most public money. That's the only analysis that was important to DaVinci.
Without the promise of huge amounts of public money from Easton, the city wouldn't have gotten a second look.
Bethlehem, Lehigh County and Allentown were all unwilling to promise anywhere near that kind of (or even any) money. That alone should tell you everything you need to know about whether the project is a good business idea.
If borrowing that kind of money made financial sense, DaVinci would be doing the borrowing by itself.
Bernie O'Hare said...
"You're nuts. The intensity of Harvey and Irma has nothing to do with how built up Easton is. It has everything to do with the warmth of the Atlantic Ocean."
I was referring to the damage, and the damage from floods certainly is impacted by how much any city (or coastline) is built up. A river overflows its banks for a few days and floods some open farmland, it's barely noticed. If that same farmland now has homes and/or office buildings on it, you have a much different problem.
Also, any Atlantic hurricane is impacted by the warmth of the Atlantic Ocean. The problem is in saying they're more intense now or trying to link them to "climate change".
We now have 24 hour news coverage bringing the hurricanes (and the devastation when they hit populated areas) into our living rooms (or to our phones). People see increased damage, and they think that it means there was increased storm intensity.
Here's a prediction: There have been intense hurricanes in the past, and there will be in the future.
There has been a direct link made between the intensity of the hurricanes and climate changes a result of a warming Atlantic. Science is not dependent on political views or "truthiness."
ftp://texmex.mit.edu/pub/emanuel/PAPERS/EOS_mann_emanuel_2006.pdf
Someone just posted an ignorant comment of the "truthiness" type. The hell with facts. I am just sick of that shit and deleted it.
Bernie,
Its long winded and not very descriptive. I think that's called a wondering mind with worthless thought patterns.
It's called science. You can get your nonsense from Rush Limbaugh.
An Inconvenient Fact:
In 1935, the "Labor Day Hurricane" hit Florida, cutting off the Florida Keys and blowing trains off the tracks. It is the most intense Hurricane ever to make landfall in the US.
Was this hurricane the result of (man-made) "climate change"?
Folks do realize "climate change" activities are tied to the Industrial revolution worldwide. It is not about any political view but actual; science. Since the Industrial revolution carbon dioxide levels have dramatically increase in the ice cores taken at the earths poles. The ice samples shows atmospheric levels over thousands of years. The most dramatic changes of carbon dioxide levels start with the Industrial Revolution. That is no apolitical position, that is just a fact. Take it for what its worth.
5:52, see the comment below yours. Answer is yes.
"Even if the property can be raised through fill and freeboards, it will send water cascading onto other properties." Actually, this would only be true if there was an intense, localized downpour on the aquarium itself. In the case of Lehigh and Delaware river flooding, an elevated building would just be an obstacle that the flood would bypass. Larry Holmes used fill to elevate his buildings on Larry Holmes Drive and they stayed dry during the floods in 2004,2005 and 2006, even though the floods surrounded the property. There were no "cascades" onto adjoining properties. The county public assistance office used street level for parking and put all the offices on the "second" floor when they rebuilt after the floods, thereby addressing two problems at once (the downtown parking shortage and the flood risk to offices.)
If they took that ridiculous dam out, they'd drop the water level of the Lehigh a good 10 feet, and your flooding problems would be far less significant.
Why does "climate change" ,make the alt-right so crazy?
if you build it, it will flood-- Field of Dream.....err Field of Nightmares
Hank_Hill
ms bradley seems to love to write TLDR posts * matt assad is working at the lvpc editing, long fall from the career at the morning call, they have an intern doing the hazard mitigation plan, god help us all * so much turn over there employee wise, seems like their mite be an issue there with employee stability
BECKY BRADLEY WHY DO YOU HAVE AN INTERN WORKING ON THE HAZARD MITIGATION PLAN? THIS IS A JOB FOR A SEASONED PROFESSIONAL IT IS A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH
Do not write in caps.
7:34, This is the same silly argument Panto tried to make. Water has to go somewhere. If you build up your property with fill and freeboards, all you are doing is diverting that water somewhere else. That is precisely what happened with the Larry Holmes and welfare buildings. Certain uses like event centers or aquariums just should not be considered. I'd be willing to study what the Dutch do, but would be very cautious. There is no caution here.
8:35 and norco nate:
Geoff Reese, nearly 40 year employee, Pennsylvania Engineer and recognized expert in water and environmental planning and management, is the Project Manger for the Regional Hazard Mitigation Plan update. As with any major planning effort at LVPC, the entire Planning Team of professional engineers, planners and geographic modelers will be working on this effort along with our partners in both counties and at Lehigh University.
Additionally, our Hazard Mitigation Intern is a Veteran and US Military certified hazard expert with extensive implementation experience serving our country overseas. His implementation experience adds tremendous value to our effort, especially as we will be considering mass population migration from the coastal zone (NY-NJ) and other man-made hazards as part of this effort. I'm very proud that his work with LVPC with help him complete his college degree, as well.
Becky, you should feel no need to justify yourself to anonymous cowards. I have seen your work in Easton and at LVPC, and we are very lucky to have you.
lol, this is better than a Trump press conference defending the Trump agenda
We don't want no stinkin' fish tank Sal! We need jobs and industry and community security. Get off your high horse and be the mayor instead of a carnival barker.
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