She used Warren Buffett’s membership card at the U.S. OPEN Winged Foot 2006 to schmooze around. HER COMPANY DOES NOT INSURE WEATHER RELATED INCIDENTS.
“Don’t bet you’ll be able to afford home insurance
Your intuition about extreme weather no longer applies
Your children may not inherit your house
Your town will need new infrastructure” SEE BELOW
In the City of Coatesville PA where I was born and still live we are doing what we can but it won't be enough.
In 2003 official stormwater management federal & Commonwealth of PA was at best inadequate.
Now it’s trash.
I don’t know if this still stands as Coatesville stormwater policy. It was out of date at the start.
“In 2003, The City of Coatesville began a comprehensive storm water management program mandated by the Federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and monitored by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (PADEP). The program is designed to literally “manage” stormwater, both by protecting water quality and by preventing high volumes of runoff from causing flooding in developed areas. Any municipality with a population of at least 5,000, including counties, must comply with the program.”
THIS VIDEO WAS MADE 3 YEARS AGO. Extensive work has been done on 13th Avenue stormwater since then. But it's a certainty that more local deluges will come.
The frequent flooding of Downingtown PA is due to the multiple communities with outdated floodwater management that basically is for small weather events.
When there is a major storm dumping water on the mostly impervious roofs, roadways and packed down near impervious grass in housing subdivisions the stormwater management basins designed for small storm events are overwhelmed and dump water into the closest stream. This creates days of extenuated flooding downstream.
The West Branch of Brandywine Creek has not had a serous flood since August 9, 1942.
Before he left Coatesville, City Manager Jean Krack told me that there were filings for 80 new subdivisions in the watershed of the West Branch Brandywine Creek north of Coatesville. The crash of 2007 collapsed the housing market. New subdivisions in the West Branch Brandwine will cause the Brandywine Creek in Coatesville to flood again.
The housing market has rebounded.
Brand New Luxury Townhomes in Glenmoore, PA
New Home Communities in Honey Brook, PA
65 Communities
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| https://www.delriverwatershed.org/news/2018/5/30/the- 2018-brandywine-christina-state-of-the-watershed-report |
"Radnor Township is in the process of updating its stormwater ordinance. The current ordinance continues to allow an increase in the volume of stormwater runoff that results from new development and fails to require use of new and innovative stormwater designs to reduce runoff from redevelopment projects. The Commissioners have a great opportunity to fix these inadequacies of the past when they update their ordinance." SEE BELOW
When I was healthier I worked with the Delaware River Watershed as a volunteer monitor.
Saturday, may 15, 2010
Dam Removal on the Manatawny Creek in Pottstown
Dam removal does not only benefit fish migration. It also restores habitat.
Only a few months after the orphaned dam on the Manatawny Creek in Pottstown was removed the macro invertebrate (aquatic insect) population began to rebound. We found Stoneflies a few hundred feet upstream of the former dam site. It was previously a too warm, low oxygen, muddy bottom (dead) area of the water. Stoneflies are generally a more sensitive aquatic insect than Mayflies.
Radnor has recently started to circulate a set of sample edits for review and input from township committees, the Delaware Riverkeeper Network has obtained a copy and below you will find our comments on the proposal. The suggested edits are a good step forward, but miss some key opportunities, and the key focus of volume reduction. To see DRN's comments and expert report: http://bit.ly/DRNRadnorSWComment
If you want to write a comment to urge a stronger ordinance that better protect Radnor's communities and environments see our action alert.
Since new development can increase the volume of stormwater, scientific experts and both federal and state agencies support preventing and reducing the volume of stormwater runoff as among the most effective strategies for protecting communities from flooding. By reducing runoff volume, these strategies prevent the stormwater that otherwise causes or contributes to flooding. Stormwater strategies that reduce runoff volume also reduce runoff velocity and pollution. As a result, they provide protection to our properties, bridges and roadways from erosion; protect our creeks from pollution which helps reduce the cost of complying with state and federal laws, and make our creeks safer places for kids to visit, fish and play.
By contrast, standard detention basins, the method of stormwater management largely used today, are merely designed to collect runoff and not reduce it. This out-dated engineering only ensures that nearly every drop collected in those basins flows to the creek where it continues to cause or exacerbate flood damages. It is important that the new stormwater ordinance in Radnor secure best practices based on current science and experience and not allow continued use of past practices known to increase the harms of flooding, pollution and erosion.
In addition, the Delaware Riverkeeper Network is active in watchdogging the stormwater advisory committee operating in Radnor and charged with making recommendations for how to invest the stormwater fee collective. Our most recent comment can also be found below."
FROM:
Documents | Delaware Riverkeeper Network
I gifted this Washington Post article, I think.
“Don’t bet you’ll be able to afford home insurance
Your intuition about extreme weather no longer applies
Your children may not inherit your house
Your town will need new infrastructure”
The Washington Post
Why we all need to think like Floridians now
September 5, 2023 at 6:30 a.m. ED
When I was growing up in Florida, my friend and I played a game in the backyard. We’d get shovels to dig as deep as we could. After uncovering a few inches of black soil, we’d reach white sand. Then it was beach all the way down.
It dawned on me, around that time, I was living on an ancient seafloor.
Florida was developed under the assumption that canals, pumps and clever engineering could turn swamps and sandbars into cities, reversing the state’s geological history. For decades, those tools mostly worked.
But recent storms and floods are highlighting Florida’s tenuous status as dry land. We’re entering a more extreme climate regime, Hurricane Idalia’s record-breaking storm surges and roaring winds remind us. It’s one that could overwhelm even a state used to the onslaught.
For Americans living elsewhere, it might be easy to dismiss what happens to Florida, a vulnerable peninsula jutting into the Atlantic Ocean. But Florida is not an exception. It’s just early.
As climate change advances, the rest of the country will see old assumptions crumble as other communities get hit by calamitous natural disasters, unaffordable insurance, stranded real estate and other problems Florida is facing now.
“Florida is really the tip of the spear on climate impacts,” says Rachel Silverstein, a marine biologist and head of Miami Waterkeeper. “Living in Florida is already living on the brink of where humans can survive.”
I spoke with scientists, policy experts and Florida residents about what the rest of us can expect in the future, and what the Sunshine State has to teach us.
Don’t bet you’ll be able to afford home insurance
Florida’s insurance marketplace is a hot mess. Climate-related disasters have inflicted billions of dollars in damage, while unscrupulous insurers, fraud and poor regulation mean bankrupt insurance companies have left many homeowners with nothing.
Premiums are skyrocketing. In the United States, the average homeowners insurance premium is $1,900 a year. In Miami, it’s $5,000. Yet property and casualty insurers, as a whole in Florida, haven’t turned a profit since 2016.
And climate disasters are only going to become more frequent, intense and expensive even with massive investments in adaptation.
Insurers are now waking up to — and attempting to price in — these risks: “Climate risk is driving insurer decisions like never before,” writes Benjamin Keys, a professor of finance and real estate at the Wharton School.
For now, regulation is holding prices in check in some places. But once climate disaster risks are fully priced in, entire states will probably see premiums soar, and disaster-prone areas may become uninsurable, with policies not even offered. Many people will risk everything by going without coverage. An estimated two-thirds of households in flood zones have flood insurance.
If you thought this was a coastal problem, think again. Anyone living in the path of wildfires, floods, hailstorms and other natural disasters will find an unstable climate far more expensive. Insurance troubles are already spreading beyond Florida to Louisiana and California, where floods and wildfires have put multiple insurance companies out of business or forced their exit.
Your intuition about extreme weather no longer applies
Idalia jumped from a Category 1 storm to a Category 4 in a single day. The hurricane was supercharged by ocean temperatures off Florida that have reached 101 degrees this year.
Strong storms have made landfall before, of course. But we’ve never seen conditions so favorable to fueling them. Climate change is also intensifying droughts, wildfires and floods.
We tend to see climate change as a gradual process. But we may be leaving behind a climatically stable period, the 10,000-year-old Holocene, for the Anthropocene, a proposed geological epoch in which human activity has transformed the climate and ecosystems. Rapid changes beyond anyone’s personal experience are likely.
“Very little in nature is linear,” Silverstein says. “The expectation that we’d see this change in any sort of regular way is an incorrect expectation.”
Your children may not inherit your house
Millions of homeowners in coastal Florida are already living with the likelihood that their property will be underwater this century. Researchers and government agencies estimate rapid sea level rise in the coming decades: 10 to 17 inches by 2040 and up to 4.5 feet by 2070, according to an estimate commissioned by local authorities. You can see how climate change is predicted to inundate low-lying communities with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s sea level rise maps.
“The idea we can build walls doesn’t work. It will come in from underneath‚” says Harold Wanless of the University of Miami. “When sea levels rise, it will be impossible to keep the water out. We’re all going to have to look at moving on.”
Many will confront the need for climate migration. The federal government has already spent millions of dollars to resettle families from Wisconsin and Illinois to escape floodwaters.
If you do want to pass on your home, expect climate risks to lower property values. Keys’s research found prices for coastal Florida real estate had already begun reflecting sea level risk as early as 2010, shaving about 5 percent off prices compared to less exposed communities. “In 50 years, the result could be miles of unlivable homes,” Keys writes.
Your town will need new infrastructure
South Floridians are already seeing the limits of existing infrastructure. Rising sea levels mean the canals they rely on to keep homes dry can no longer drain during storms. Waste in septic tanks has nowhere to go as intense rains and rising seas boost water-table levels, contaminating water supplies.
“We can no longer depend on gravity to be able to move water off the land, so pump stations are becoming necessary,” Nancy Gassman, Fort Lauderdale’s assistant public works director in charge of sustainability, told the Miami Herald. While Miami plans to spend $3.8 billion to elevate roads and install more than 100 pumps, those are just stopgaps.
These kinds of challenges are beginning to show up across the country. Extreme heat is melting roads, buckling train tracks and expanding bridges beyond their limit. Water supplies in desert cities such as Phoenix are running short, while scorching heat and frigid lows are testing electricity grids.
Floridians have vowed to rebuild in the wake of Idalia. But there are no easy answers. “We have to seriously question not just rebuilding after a disaster, but building our infrastructure with the acceptance the next 50 years will not look like the last 50 years,” Silverstein says.
Adapting means major, long-term shifts in how we think. Changing our mind-set, Silverstein says, is one the most powerful things people can do in their own community — and country.
“The best thing I’ve come up with is something our mayor [Miami-Dade County’s Daniella Levine Cava] said about civic engagement:
‘Every day you can read something about an issue to learn about it, every week you can make a call about something or send a letter, and every month you can show up to a meeting or community group.’
We can all do that,” says Silverstein.
***
This is from a Los Angeles Times newsletter:
Earlier this year two major insurers, Allstate and State Farm, announced they would stop offering new policies for properties in the Golden State. Officials from State Farm — the state’s longtime top home insurer — cited “rapidly growing catastrophe exposure and a challenging reinsurance market.”
Farmers recently announced it was laying off 11% of its workforce and tempering its growth goals in California.
The companies indicate they’re responding to what scientists have been telling us: Human-caused climate change is intensifying wildfires and other environmental disasters. Covering homes in increasingly dry, fuel-rich forests, on cliffs that don’t stay put and at the edge of the coast as sea levels rise is a business that’s only getting riskier.
“This could be the beginning of a market collapse that would leave millions stranded without affordable insurance as their homes burned to the ground,” Times business reporter Sam Dean wrote this summer...
So what else should the state and federal government be doing to avoid the “uninsurable future” Jones warns about? He shared a few ideas:
- The Federal Reserve and other federal financial regulators need to get serious about assessing the risks climate change poses to the financial system. That’s something the Fed just recently started to do, though critics say their efforts are weak and well behind other countries’ efforts.
- State and federal leaders should invest more in forest management, especially prescribed burns. Jones said officials finally recognized that “a century and a half of fire suppression has resulted in forests choked with fuel.” Prescribed burns are key to reducing the risks of fires growing to out-of-control infernos, and Jones would like to see insurers factor such risk reduction into their assessments.
- Most significant, Jones said, is the need to dramatically and quickly cut the human-made emissions that affect our environment.
MORE AT:
LA TIMES
As climate change challenges home insurers, an ‘uninsurable future’ looms
By Ryan FonsecaStaff Writer Sept. 7, 2023 6:30 AM PT
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