Like a lot of people, the June 1972 Agnes Flood woke up Tim Palmer.
Just in a different way.
“It woke me up to the dangers of waiting for people all over our country,” he said. “When I faced the Agnes Flood, I realized that this is a natural event. It's way more powerful than we'll ever be. And we have not recognized that, we've not come to terms with that.”
The award-winning conservationist will speak Friday at 2 p.m. at Lycoming College about the dangers of flooding amid global warming.
The talk is free and open to the public. Hosted by the college’s Clean Water Institute, it will be in the Barclay Lecture Hall in the Heim Science Building.
Palmer wrote about flooding in his latest book, “Seek Higher Ground.”
“I'll be giving a slide track that will illustrate the over reliance on dams and levees, (flood) relief, the need to protect open space, the need to help people relocate and the possibilities and the promise of greenways rather than damage prone development in floodplains, how greenways are really the bright spot in the future here,” Palmer said.
Palmer, who now lives in Oregon, grew up in Beaver, Pennsylvania, in the state’s southwest. Palmer found his love of nature in the Appalachian foothills.
“My family would visit the Youghiogheny River again, a river of southwestern Pennsylvania. It became the most polluted whitewater in the country, and in the state’s largest state park. I became very attached to natural free-flowing rivers there as a part of family trips when I was very young,” he said.
He begins the book by recounting Agnes. Between 1971 and 1980, he was Lycoming County’s environmental planner. Hurricane Agnes caused one of the most costly natural disasters in history, according to the National Weather Service.
Nationwide, 122 people died and damage totaled $3 billion in 1972 dollars, according to the weather service. About $2 billion in losses occurred in the Susquehanna River Basin.
At age 24, Palmer was at the flood’s “ground zero.” He lived in Pine Creek Township in Clinton County.
“The home I was in was nearly flooded. My neighbors were deeply affected and I was very much involved in that as a catastrophe,” he said.
After that, Palmer dedicated his time to conservation. His goal was to help prevent similar disasters.
“That led me to many other interests in floodplain management and floods,” he said. “Right away, this occurred to me as a natural event that we could never begin to stop. We had to figure out ways of adapting to the threats of these kinds of natural events.”
Palmer worked with the county until 1980, then began writing about conservation and the environment full-time. He has written more than 30 books.
Palmer said floods are natural.
“Floods have amazing natural value, and they are not only inevitable, but they are beneficial to the natural world. Fish need floods, wildlife need floods, groundwater recharge, which half of half of us depend upon for water supplies depend on floods,” he said.
For decades, governments have dealt with flooding by building dams and levees to hold back rising waters. Despite that, the waters still rise. If a flood damages property, the government offers financial relief.
These approaches have not reduced flood damage, Palmer argues.
“We have to take a different approach and a better approach to dealing with this problem,” he said.
The answer is to avoid developing floodplains and help people move away from flood-prone areas, he said.
“We need to protect open space on floodplains and help people relocate to safer ground wherever they're willing to go,” Palmer said.
Governments have invested a lot of money in levee systems. Recently, U.S. Rep. Dan Meuser secured $3.5 million for upgrading Williamsport’s levee system.
“When we think we're protected by a structure like that, we are too often not. We do need to protect places of intense development. I mean, it's not just Williamsport, it's St. Louis, Omaha, Portland, Oregon, depending on levees. Sacramento, for example, is heavily dependent - they just spent $4 billion, upgrading their levee to a level that they hope will be safe,” Palmer said.
However, intensely developed areas account for less than 10% of American floodplains, Palmer said.
“The vast majority of places that are flood prone, or not those intensely developed places, they're more rural places - more where there's more scattered development. In those areas, it's simply not going to be possible to build to safe standards, so that everyone can be secured of their safety during the intensified floods,” Palmer said.
In these places, Palmer recommends relocation.
With climate change, storms will get stronger and droughts more intense, Palmer said. For every one degree in higher temperature, the atmosphere will hold 4 percent more water, Palmer said.
“It's just a matter of time before we have a storm that's equal or greater than that one was,” Palmer said, referring to Agnes.
Visit https://www.timpalmer.org/ to learn more about Palmer and his work.
