From The Morning Call, By Scott Kraus
May 30, 2007

Bucks asks panel to reduce flooding
County commissioners want task force to work with federal, state and regional experts to limit storm damage along the Delaware River.

The Bucks County commissioners convened their new flooding task force Tuesday at the Delaware River Toll Bridge Commission headquarters in New Hope, charging members to examine every aspect of flooding.
That means preventing floods where possible, protecting life and property if one should occur and cleaning up afterwards, Commissioner Chairman Charley Martin said.

The 17-member task force has representatives of every municipality with a Delaware River shoreline from Bristol to Durham Township, and nearly every one was in attendance for the first meeting, which was primarily organizational.

The Delaware River has flooded three times in the last two years, with river communities such as Riegelsville bearing the brunt.

Martin said the commissioners had met recently with representatives of Gov. Ed Rendell, as well as the Delaware River Basin Commission and PPL, which controls the Lake Wallenpaupack reservoir, which sometimes overflows into a tributary of the Delaware River.

All three said they would be glad to meet with the task force to answer any questions.
''We want to address them intelligently,'' Martin said. ''I think the clout of 17 municipalities and the county is much more than any one of us individually.''

Lynn Bush, executive director of the Bucks County Planning Commission, asked the task force members also to look at a variety of river-related initiatives under way in the county. The initiatives include the Open Space Task Force recommendation to protect Delaware River shoreline from development, and in the south end of the county a plan to preserve the Delaware River banks.

It's not the county's first flooding task force. U.S. Rep. Patrick Murphy, D-8th District, earlier this year convened his own smaller flood-study group, which is trying to get the Army Corps of Engineers to survey the Delaware shoreline to see what can be done to reduce future flooding.

Martin pledged that the Bucks task force would work with Murphy's group and not at cross purposes.
The commissioners' panel is expected to take a close look at studies of the flooding problem by the Delaware River Basin Commission and a proposed plan to better manage water levels in reservoirs supplying New York City that sometimes overflow into the Delaware during heavy rains.

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