EDITORIAL
By Rick Sinding
A little more than a year to the day after Hurricane Katrina turned the Gulf Coast into a disaster area, central New Jersey got but a tiny taste of nature’s wrath over the weekend in the form of Tropical Depression Ernesto.
It could have been a lot worse, of course. The season’s fifth storm could have picked up intensity as it made landfall in North Carolina late Thursday night. Instead, its status dropped from hurricane to tropical storm to tropical depression as it chugged slowly northward, drenching much of the East Coast but sparing us the kind of tree-uprooting, power line-snapping winds forecasters had been predicting earlier.
Still, it was a pretty unpleasant way for picnickers, hikers, bikers, golfers, swimmers, festival-goers and other outdoor enthusiasts to spend part of their holiday weekend and a lousy way to end what had generally been a fairly good summer season at the Jersey Shore. And it served, once again, as a reminder of how vulnerable we are to a form of attack to which we have long been accustomed one launched by natural, as opposed to man-made, forces.
It’s easy, in times such as these, to fall back on that age-old refrain about weather (as opposed to terrorists): Everybody talks about it, but nobody does anything about it. Yet there’s a growing body of evidence that we are, in fact, doing something about our climate changing it, in more than subtle ways, through certain activities in which we routinely engage, such as emitting vast amounts of carbon dioxide, hydrocarbons and other unwelcome substances into the atmosphere.
More to the point, even if we can’t do anything to ward off adverse weather, there is a great deal we could do but don’t to mitigate its impact.
We could, for example, stop paving over land that would otherwise absorb substantial amounts of stormwater.
We could stop putting up housing developments, office complexes and mega-malls atop aquifers that need the replenishment of abundant rainfall.
We could stop building in flood plains and along fragile coastal barriers that stand directly in harm’s way, all but inviting the sort of devastation that visits them with such alarming regularity.
We could, in short, recognize that the weather itself is not the sole source of our aggravation. A good, soaking rain doesn’t do much damage in an area where an open field can absorb it, but it can wreak havoc when it falls only on rooftops, streets, sidewalks and other impervious surfaces and has nowhere else to go.
If we’re lucky, as we were this past weekend, the damage is slight a leaky roof, a wet basement, a pothole that’s easily repaired. But all too often, if the wind is blowing in a different direction or the rain arrives at a different time of day, riverbanks overflow, houses are washed away, streets and sidewalks crumble and homeowners (not to mention taxpayers) are left with cleanup and repair bills that are truly astronomical.
A lot of municipal officials have complained over the past year about the time and effort they’ve had to expend drawing up plans to meet New Jersey’s strict new stormwater regulations. And a lot of builders and developers have assailed the provisions of the State Development and Redevelopment Plan that seek to direct development toward established centers and away from what little undeveloped land remains in the Garden State.
But Ernesto, along with the several unnamed storms that have left an indelible impression lately on our overbuilt landscape, offer timely testimony to the wisdom and importance of these initiatives and others aimed at preserving what’s left of our natural habitat. This isn’t about protecting some barren wasteland where endangered species make their home; it’s about protecting what humans have already built. And it isn’t about saving the snail darter; it’s about saving lives.

