By Brian Scheid
A year ago, muddy
waters leaped from the banks of the Delaware River and once again took
over riverfront hamlets such as Yardley and New Hope.
Residents and business owners along the
Delaware are no strangers to flooding — last year’s flood was the third
major flood since September 2004. However, environmentalists warn that
it definitely won’t be the last time homeowners in Yardley will watch
floodwaters creep to their front door.
With a number of factors at play, from global
warming to decades of development within the river basin, flooding
could actually become more frequent and severe, according to David
Masur, director of PennEnvironment, a statewide environmental advocacy
group.
"It’s going to get worse before it gets
better," Masur said. "We’re not even at the tipping point yet in terms
of the worst of the worst."
For years, many scientists and
environmentalists have warned that global warming, or a gradual
increase in the earth’s surface temperature, will create more severe
weather, including more floods and droughts. Before last year’s flood,
a severe drought had plagued the region for weeks.
"It’s very likely that we’ll have more severe
flooding as well as more severe droughts," said Robin Hoy, a
conservation chairwoman with the Bucks County chapter of the Sierra
Club. "I don’t think it’s going to stop. What we need is to keep it
from getting worse."
Several scientists have refuted global warming
evidence as a statistical anomaly, pointing out that weather patterns
are cyclical. U.S. Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., the former chairman of
the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, once famously
referred to global warming as a "hoax."
In an attempt to end the debate, the U.S. House
passed a bill this week that recognizes climate change as a "reality"
and pledges nearly $28 billion to address the problem, well above the
$2 billion President Bush pledged for global warming research.
However, environmentalists warn that global warming is not the only culprit in the rash of flooding in Bucks.
"Is there some silver bullet that we can say is causing this?" asked Masur. "No."
Decades of land use decisions, particularly
suburban sprawl in Bucks, has eliminated thousands of acres of
farmlands, wetlands and forests that could have absorbed heavy
precipitation and kept flooding to a minimum, according to Robin Mann,
a member of the Sierra Club Pennsylvania chapter’s water issues
committee.
"The more that we do to harden the surface that water falls on, the more we’re exasperating the problem," Mann said.
"When you pave over all these places and you create impervious surfaces, then the rain has nowhere else to go," said Masur.
However, according to Maya van Rossum, the
Delaware Riverkeeper, the idea that last year’s flood could have
somehow been prevented is a false one.
"Whether or not there was development or global
warming, there would have been a catastrophic flood," she said. "We
would have had an extreme event regardless."
Flooding is a natural stage in a river’s life
cycle, van Rossum said, and the only way to prevent disastrous
consequences when floodwaters leap from the Delaware River’s banks is
to keep homes and businesses far out of the flood plain.
"The fact of the matter is that if they’re in
the flood plain, they’re going to get flooded," van Rossum said.
"Floods happen, floods will continue to happen and floods should
happen."
