Map showing flood of June 1972 resulting from tropical storm Agnes, Susquehanna River and Swatara Creek at Middletown, Pennsylvania

1972 ◽  
Author(s):  
L.V. Page ◽  
L.C. Shaw
Keyword(s):  
Tropical Storm ◽  
Susquehanna River

Into the Future

2020 ◽  
pp. 156-160
Author(s):  
Timothy W. Kneeland
Keyword(s):  
Emergency Management ◽  
Tropical Storm ◽  
The State ◽  
First Century ◽  
Natural State ◽  
Army Corps ◽  
Army Corps Of Engineers ◽  
Susquehanna River ◽  
Private Homes ◽  
The U.S

This epilogue highlights efforts to dissuade people from building or rebuilding in the vicinity of the Susquehanna River, as well as efforts to buy out private homes and businesses located in persistent flood zones. Changes in the policy toward the Susquehanna River began after the first decade of the twenty-first century. Following Tropical Storm Lee in 2011, neither the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers nor the state of Pennsylvania showed interest in adding to or creating new flood walls along the Susquehanna River, the policy that had been preferred in the twentieth century. Instead, the state obtained grants from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which it used to purchase houses and businesses in the Wyoming Valley. Hundreds of people, tired of the perpetual flooding, sold their homes to the local government, which then cleared them off the floodplain and began to restore the river and floodplain to a natural state. The chapter then considers the even more radical idea of removing existing levees and dams along the Susquehanna.

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