A few weeks ago, when Shermans Creek was already swollen with snowmelt, we had one of those big rainstorms that seem determined to wash winter right down the drain. We got about three inches in a single day. By early afternoon, the creek began to flood.
An errand took me down Pine Hill Road, toward the picturesque one-lane bridge that leads to Doubleday Farm. It’s rare to meet a car on that bridge, and I’ll often stop for a few moments to admire the rapids and try to spot a heron, or, if I’m really lucky, perhaps a leaping trout.
But that day, the creek had burst its banks and was already washing over Pine Hill Road. The water on the road didn’t look very deep. The bridge was definitely passable, if I could just reach it. It was one of those fateful moments of decision: do I forge ahead, trusting in my car not to stall; or do I turn back?
I turned back.
I’d studied the weather forecast online. I’d seen Doppler radar of the monster storm that was churning overhead. I also knew that Shermans Creek was rising fast. How? By checking one of our go-to websites: the National Weather Service’s Advanced Hydrologic Prediction Site, which uses the streamgage at Shermans Dale to help predict the severity of floods.
I knew, for instance, that three of the four roads that connect the outside world to our house on St. Peters Church Road would be closed until late evening the following day, when a friend would be arriving from the north. Thanks to the information on the NWS website, I was able to pass along driving directions that kept her out of harm’s way.
The information provided by the streamgage at Shermans Dale is profoundly useful – even potentially life-saving. Which is why it was so surprising to see a special notice on the website in early February, to the effect that the streamgage’s real-time data delivery was going to be discontinued due to “funding reductions.”
To find out what was behind that notice, and a follow-up notice six weeks later, announcing that funding had been secured through September 30th of this year, I called Bob Hainly, Assistant Director of the USGS Pennsylvania Water Science Center.
I asked Bob a simple question: what bureaucratic genius would cut funding for a flood warning system?
Answer: the American people, outraged over Congressional earmarks.
It turns out that the streamgage in Shermans Dale is one of 44 streamgages in the Susquehanna River Basin capable of giving local officials a snapshot of flood conditions. The Flood Forecasting Program was designed in the mid 1980s as a warning system to better address high water. But, like so many worthy ideas before Congress, it never found a permanent home in the federal budget. It was funded, year after year, with earmarks.
In the current Congress, the word “earmark” has become synonymous with “satanic spending.” That, coupled with the hobbled federal budget, which limps forward these days, month to month, on the strength of continuing resolutions, put Bob Hainly and his colleagues on notice that the streamgages would have to go begging.
I was surprised to learn how expensive the streamgages are to maintain: anywhere from three to twelve thousand dollars a year, once all the labor-intensive aspects of the process are factored in. The federal contribution towards the 44 streamgages of the Susquehanna Flood Forecasting Program was about $270,000 per year, roughly 60% of their upkeep.
Bob posted the first budget warning in early February. There followed a scramble to make up the deficit, which involved many of the warning system’s existing funding partners, and even a grassroots campaign to “Adopt a Streamgage.”
In the end, the State of Pennsylvania stepped forward to guarantee funding through the end of this fiscal year. But beyond that, the future of real-time data delivery from the Shermans Dale streamgage – and, more broadly, the overall health and integrity of the flood forecasting and warning system – does seem to be in question.
Here’s a case where political fearmongering – “Earmarks are destroying the fabric of our nation!” – runs up against the nuanced reality of local, state, and federal partnerships. Thanks to a toxic atmosphere in Washington, where “earmark” has become a dirty word, Pennsylvania has just had to pick up a quarter-million-dollar tab that was previously footed with federal dollars.
I’m not defending earmarks. Earmarks are no way to fund essential public health and safety programs. And they are certainly conducive to Congressional “pork.”
But in this case, the pork may just have saved my bacon.
This column was published in the Perry Co Times on 31 March 2011
For more information, please contact Mr. Olshan at writing@matthewolshan.com
