News

March 18, 2013

Elmira (WENY) -- "It's common sense, you don't want to get rid of it. Like I said, taking smoke detectors out of a house and school, you won't do that," said Jim Pfiffer, Director of Friends of Chemung River Watershed.
     Dozens of river gauges throughout the Susquehanna River Basin help warn against threat of flooding. These gauges have been critical in previous years, letting people know when the water is nearing flood level, giving them time to get out of the flood zone safely. 
     US Senators ChuckSchumer and Kirsten Gillibrand asked the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to help fund the 18 stream gauges and 16 rain gauges, that were scheduled to be shut off on March 1st.
     NOAA had 25 million dollars from the Sandy Supplemental Bill, to improve weather forecasting. The Senators asked for 215 thousand of this money to help keep the stream and river gauges online for a year.
     Pfiffer said, "while it seems like a lot of money, when compared to the national budget it's a drop in the bucket to save millions of dollars and more important to save lives."
     Ward Freeman, Director at the New York Science Center, said that as little of as a 4 hour warning can save as much as 10% of the costs of damages related to floods.
     "These gauges are critical, many of them are flood forecast gauges and you know the flooding they had in 2006, 2011 and many other times, people need these gauges to be able to know when they need to move to higher ground," said Freeman. 
     Pfiffer added, "don't blame the river, let's take care of it and do everything we can to have these precautions in place and to be responsible. That's exactly what it boils down to, is being responsible to your constituents."�@