Paul Tonko: “There again, it's policy or lack thereof that's impacting us heavily. Witnessing some of the unusual 100-year storms…”

“There again, it's policy or lack thereof that's impacting us heavily. Witnessing some of the unusual 100-year storms, 500-year storms as they're designated in a rapid succession over the last several years, dating back to the late 1980s, but then in rapid succession 2006, 2011 and 2012 in upstate New York in an area that I represent, or just south of me in the area that borders my district, tells me that even the nomenclature is ludicrous. It is not a 100 or 500-year storm; it's happening frequently. And it is because we don't embrace some of the science out there that, through data compilation, is begging our attention. If we're going to continue to ignore those impacts of Mother Nature, if we're going to ignore the global warming and impacts of Mother Nature on our infrastructure, we are going to have more and more bills for cleanup. And is it just replacement, or are we talking about reevaluating situations? For instance, some of the electrical utility efforts that stayed most abundantly strong were distributed energy projects along the coast in metro New York with Superstorm Sandy. I saw infrastructure, bridges displaced by the powerful force of water, in some places equated to the cfs, the cubic feet per second, flow of Niagara Falls. So the data are telling you that these storms are more and more frequent, you're going to get this extra volume of water, precipitation, do you just replace, or do you take a longer span, greater height to that bridge design?…”