Recent Delaware River floods cited in plea to Senate to pass $550B climate investment package

Easton is a spot the place the Lehigh Valley’s two principal defining waterways come collectively — the Lehigh and the Delaware rivers — and the place, when climate goes mistaken, it may be very apparent and damaging.

That’s why a small group of Lehigh Valley leaders and specialists on Thursday known as a information convention to induce the U.S. Senate to go a $550 billion package deal local weather change mitigation package deal.

The measure handed the Home within the fall, a part of President Joe Biden’s large social coverage and local weather invoice.

Audio system on Thursday credited Pennsylvania Democratic Sen. Bob Casey with help for the measure. Casey’s workplace later advised lehighvalleylive.com that he’ll proceed efforts to convey this and different local weather change laws to Senate votes.

Nonetheless, Republican Sen. Pat Toomey, a Lehigh Valley resident, won’t help the measure — in a press release to lehighvalleylive.com, a spokesperson for his workplace known as it a “reckless tax and spending spree.”

However supporters of the measure say time is working out and that widespread impacts will probably be much more expensive.

“Local weather change is actual,” Pa. state Rep. Robert Freeman, D-Northampton, mentioned in Thursday’s information convention, a couple of week forward of Earth Day 2022. “It poses an existential menace to our planet, and we have to rise to the event to fight its results on the environment and to make sure a extra promising future for all of the inhabitants of Earth.”

The results of local weather change don’t cease with the climate, Freeman and different audio system mentioned. They will prolong into infrastructure, the economic system and public well being. The federal package deal would assist with higher infrastructure, group planning and different mitigation, they mentioned.

Talking in Scott Park on the confluence of the 2 rivers, Easton Metropolis Councilmember Roger Ruggles mentioned passage within the Senate may assist town replace its water infrastructure and make it extra resilient in opposition to floods. He famous that in a extreme 2005 flood, the spot the place the rostrum stood, overlooking the river, playgrounds and bridges, would have been 10 ft underwater.

Tropical Storm Ida final September despatched the Delaware River at Easton to its tenth highest crest on file. Floods reached houses alongside the Lehigh River, companies on smaller creeks, and result in loss of life and destruction significantly downriver in Lambertville.

Extra not too long ago, the Lehigh Valley noticed virtually a month’s value of rain within the first week of April. Route 611 was washed out close to the Delaware Water Hole. Native leaders there on Thursday known as a separate information convention to remind guests that the realm companies are nonetheless open, even because the highway stays indefinitely closed.

The audio system in Easton calling for a Senate vote mentioned results will solely turn out to be worse with out motion.

Martha Christine, a Bethlehem resident with a background in farming, mentioned she’s seen fruit bushes harmed by early springs and late freezes, and excessive flooding that washes away fertile soil and younger crops.

“Doing nothing about local weather will imply extra floods, extra warmth waves, extra mosquitoes, extra ticks, extra infections, extra viruses and micro organism,” mentioned Lehigh College biology professor Jill Schneider. “Local weather inaction will convey extra warming, extra rain, extra flood, extra displaced individuals, extra individuals combating over assets, extra immigration, extra illness.”

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Steve Novak could also be reached at snovak@lehighvalleylive.com.