USA: New York area must prepare for future floods

Last year’s hurricane, storms and the flooding that followed left New York state damaged and vulnerable. Poughkeepsie Journal warns that resources need to be put not only into restoring the damaged areas but also into prevention, such as clearing blocked waterways from strom debris.

U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., has urged the federal government to invest in both National Pre-Disaster Mitigation and FEMA’s Disaster Relief funds. “These investments save federal dollars in the long term, as federal studies have shown that for every dollar spent on pre-disaster mitigation, three dollars are saved in disaster recovery costs,” she said. As hurricanes and tropicals storms are expected to be more and more frequent, mitigation is the prudent and financially smart thing to do.