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Region 1: EPA New England

Taking Action to Avoid the Next "Hundred Year Storm"

Note: EPA no longer updates this information, but it may be useful as a reference or resource.

By Curt Spalding
April 15, 2010

Even as Rhode Islanders are in the middle of the long and unpleasant task of putting their lives back together after the recent disastrous floods, many people are wondering when the next big storm will be, and where in New England it might hit.

Alas, weather data from the past 30 or so years is not promising.  The frequency of large storms has increased throughout the Northeastern United States, especially in coastal areas.  Climate models predict this trend will continue - as the overwhelming majority of scientists have warned, global climate change will alter precipitation patterns, increasing the intensity of heavy rainfall events.

Here in New England, we’ve experienced an increasing number of heavy rainfall and flooding events during the past decade. The Mother’s Day storm of 2006 brought major flooding to parts of Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine; the Patriots Day storm of 2007 produced flooding in Maine and New Hampshire; and heavy rains in 2008 caused flooding in northern New England.  It seems likely that the projections of climate scientists are coming true earlier than anyone expected.  Nature has given us a clear wake-up call – as the environment changes, we need to rebuild and upgrade our infrastructure and make our communities more resilient.

Luckily, there are prudent steps we can take which won’t bankrupt our communities, and will help our environment help us to reduce the effects of these powerful storms.

Pavement, roofs, roads and parking lots – all of these are so commonplace that we scarcely notice them in our day-to-day lives.  But these hard surfaces can turn a heavy rain into a flood in our communities.  When we pave lots of surfaces, or turn a field or wetland into a shopping mall or highway, we aren’t just changing the visual look of the landscape.  We’re also taking away areas where stormwater could once soak harmlessly into the ground, and turning them into areas that capture the rain and channel it into storm drains, then directly into our streams and lakes.  When rains come fast and furious, the environment can’t handle the quantity of water.  So we experience floods.

The simple reality is, the way we handle stormwater, and how much we help stormwater return to the ground, has a direct and immediate impact on whether a storm is simply an awesome spectacle, or becomes a catastrophic event.

EPA is working hard to address this issue in New England.  One of the most significant steps we are taking to is a pilot program in the Charles River watershed, helping communities increase the amount of storm water being filtered back into the ground.  This helps prevent flooding, and also reduces the amount of pollution entering our rivers, lakes and streams. In essence, we’re trying to promote smart, common sense “Best Management Practices” to restore the natural water cycle, even where we’ve already developed schools, malls, or subdivisions.

EPA is also working closely with our state and local government counterparts to make use of evolving climate change data and modeling, so that we can make prudent, informed decisions to protect our communities and adapt to changing weather patterns in the near term.

As a long-time Rhode Islander, I know how miserable these recent storms have been. But I also know that the spirit of our neighbors and communities will not be so easily doused.  Creating rain gardens, installing catchment basins in and near parking lots, channeling rain water from big box store roofs into soak pits; all of these are actions we can begin to take – now – that will help us weather the next big storm.

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