Commemorating the 1-Year Anniversary of Superstorm Sandy

Floor Speech

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Mr. TONKO. Thank you very much, Representative Holt. Certainly your State, my home State suffered economic consequences to the nth degree. It is a stark reminder that the cost of inaction here is painfully borne by taxpayers into the future also.

So I am proud of the SEEC organization, the coalition raising the consciousness of the House as to the importance of this issue.

We are joined by Representative Scott Peters from California. Representative Peters has worked in the environmental arena and has contributed greatly in that regard. We are proud to have you join us this evening, Representative.

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Mr. TONKO. In every measurement that we make, there is a huge impact that climate change calculates to the negative. You talked about the impact worldwide. It is the sightings of a perfect storm, with less available land as it erodes with these floodings and with a growing population worldwide. That is the formation of a perfect storm.

But when we look closer to home, in these United States, you and I are part of the delegations that represent coastal States. The coastal erosion and the erosion of valuable farmland in my district are realities, and it is measurable already. The forewarnings are out there to take action to prevent further erosion. When you think of that impact, it comes in several dimensions, perhaps agricultural in nature as it is a major sector of our economy in this country, or in tourism. One of the bits of erosion that I saw--one of the impacts that came--was with tourism infrastructure, with very valuable historic sites that were nearly ruined and that are along the beds of creeks and rivers that are tourism destinations but that now are shut for business as they get repaired. Some of these elements are extremely delicate, and part of our fabric as a Nation is to be able to share our sense of history with either other people of the United States or with visitors who travel to this land, so there are impacts that come.

I would also talk about the infrastructure impacts on the energy side. We witnessed situations in which some fared better than others, and I was proud of our SEEC organization. Now, you and I are longtime charter members of SEEC, and I am proud of the fact that we called upon the Sandy Rebuilding Task Force to help communities rebuild stronger and smarter by having the task force issue guidance for combined heat and power, CHP systems. Those systems fared well in areas ravaged by these superstorms.

CHP, as many know, is an innovative sort of concept, an energy-efficient method for generating electricity and harnessing heat, the thermal energy that accompanies that. In CHP systems, heat that normally is wasted--allowed to escape--is captured and recovered as useful energy, and that allows us to require and to, perhaps, promote this integrated concept approach far more efficient than conventional power generation would be. Conventional methods have a typical combined efficiency of 45 percent, while CHP can operate as high as 80 percent. This technology is not only efficient; it also has demonstrated resiliency to extreme weather events. I can cite South Oaks Hospital on Long Island, which is a hospital facility that includes an acute psychiatric hospital, a nursing home and an assisted living center. During the storm and its aftermath, the hospital maintained full power through the use of its 1.3 megawatt CHP system.

Again, lessons, hopefully, will be learned. So, as we go to replace, we also have to transition some of our thinking and make certain that we are building systems that will be able to endure these storms into the future. Certainly amongst our priorities has got to be this all-out effort to combat global warming, climate change, to make certain that we do all of our preventative measures. Then when we rebuild, we do it in a way that is efficient so that sound government, smart government, is the tool that is reached to rather than awkwardly replacing in a sort of rush order to get us back into a working progressive outcome, but where we haven't addressed some of the dynamics of the ravages of weather, which is teaching us several lessons as we go through these many storms.

So you are absolutely right. The people are the most impacted here. We have to keep them front and center in our thinking, but all of these services that either provide jobs for people or provide economic opportunities, economic growth, or that meet their public safety needs or their energy needs or their household needs or their business needs have got to be brought into this calculus that is adjusting concepts

based on the theory of climate change, and where we, again, underscore the importance of prevention.

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Mr. TONKO. I think it is very important for us to recognize, too, that here this evening you and several of our colleagues and I have shared thoughts about painful consequences in our given regions, or we have talked about not only flooding but drought situations and wildfires. We have talked about the economic impact of climate change with these associated storms. We have talked about the recovery efforts. We have talked about Superstorm Sandy on this 1-year commemoration date, still finding its neighborhoods, its communities, its people, its businesses, its farming communities still struggling to recover. We have talked about all of this, and now I think we need to close, in the remaining minutes we have in this hour, and talk about a plan of action.

Now, SEEC, the Sustainable Energy and Environmental Coalition, has a growing number of representatives--56 strong as we speak. Individuals are talking about the consciousness, raising the consciousness, talking about awareness out there in the community. But there is also a requirement for legislative action. Absent that, we move to an executive order, and some have expressed concern about that.

Leaving no other option available, the Chief Executive, the President, has moved to resolve some of these concerns through organizations and agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency. So I think there needs to be this dialogue here and in the United States Senate, working with the President, with the White House, and the administration to develop a sound package of legislation that allows us to go forward.

It is apparent after the number of stories heard here just this evening and the personal anecdotes that you shared, Representative Holt, about people from New Jersey and the pain that they endured. That should motivate us to move forward with a plan of action, understanding that the cost of inaction is very, very heavy. Many have placed threshold dates out there. They are not that far into the future--2017, 2020 some say at the latest.

It is our stewardship that is called upon. We inherited this environment, this Earth, from ancestors who preceded us. Now it is our challenge, I believe, to hand that to next generations unborn in even better working order with the growth worldwide of population, with the industrialization of many Third World nations, the reach to automobiles being put on the highways around the world, the development of power supplies around the world, causing this huge growth of challenge in terms of carbon emission and eventually methane that will destroy antibodies out there.

So the challenge is before us. I think we need to go forward with a very focused effort of policy development that can be done in the very near future here in the House.

Avoiding that, walking away from it, denying it ought to be revisited by those who have suffered heavily from the damages of these storms. Certainly as we focus on Superstorm Sandy this evening, on that one storm here, it has brought to mind many, many situations where people are still suffering--blocks destroyed by fires in Superstorm Sandy that destroyed neighborhoods.

We have a challenge before us, Representative Holt.

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Mr. TONKO. Thank you, Representative Holt.

I will close by just focusing in on this graphic, which showed the enormity, the immense breadth and depth of this Superstorm Sandy.

Many didn't relate that storm to a huge tide coming in. For any of us who have jumped into the ocean, we know the power of a tide. But to have the highest storm surge ever measured recorded at Kings Point, New York, the highest ever recorded at 14.38 feet, tells a story. The fact that the water level at Battery Park in Lower Manhattan reached 9.1 feet above the average high tide line. Think of it--1 inch, 2 inches, a foot of water additional that comes into a flood zone calculates that much more damage.

Here, what we had with the situation were records beyond 9 feet, approaching 10 feet, a storm surge of 14.38 feet. We are talking monumental damage. We are talking about a force that swept away lives, a force that sparked fires in neighborhoods, a force that wiped out businesses and found neighborhoods still vacant, a silence that has befallen these given communities because of the ravages of Mother Nature that can be prevented if we put our minds and hearts and efforts into that concept of being better stewards of the environment.

This is a place where a plan of action can take hold. In these Halls of government, leadership is called upon. A moral compass points in the direction of us being sounder friends of the environment and protectionists when it comes to getting things done so as to avoid the high scale of economic destruction that has gripped our communities.

I still see it in the aftermath of Irene and Lee in the 20th Congressional District of New York. Damage done in 2011 is still causing hardship in 2013, impacted by all sorts of weather events that are atypical of our region--tropic storms, hurricanes, tornados--that wiped through the area and required all sorts of volunteerism to enter in, and certainly dollars that were shared from private sector sources and from FEMA at the Federal level and various other programs at the Federal Government. It will be an exhausting situation that will continue to drain the taxpayers as we move forward if we don't take action.

On this very solemn day of commemoration, as we call to mind all of the destruction that came into 24 States a year ago this evening, should be all the call to action that is required of us. Since then, it has been followed by devastation in Colorado, wildfires in the Southwest, and predictions that more and more damage will be part and parcel to a future that is allowed to go forward without the soundness of stewardship of the environment that ought to be a high priority in this House, in the United States Senate, and certainly across this Nation.

Sound leadership begins with the acknowledgement that there is a challenge out there and that the challenge is then met with accurate and detailed and information exchange that builds a dialogue that creates a package of response that indicates that we are a compassionate, caring, loving people in this Nation that through the Halls of this House can provide hope for this environment and hope to families who have suffered the consequences and hope to generations unborn as we pass to them a stronger sense of stewardship of this Earth.

It has been our pleasure in this hour to have shared many of our ideas, many of our concerns, many of the anecdotal bits that personalize a given situation for far too many, and we are thankful for the opportunity.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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