Letters

I’m not typically keen on dueling Letters to the Editor, but in my best Inigo Montoya voice, my response to Highway Superintendent Charles McArdle is: “I did not say what you think I said” [“Oversight Failure,” Letters, November 13].

Let me try again by melding our two points of view: If governments at all levels continue to ignore necessary infrastructure maintenance while our planet continues to warm, expect the kinds of things that happened at Sunrise Highway to happen with more frequency. The combination of more intense storms with shoddy maintenance programs will cause more damage and impact on our lives in harmful ways.

Mr. McArdle and I are on the same page when he asserts that lack of oversight and maintenance were a problem for Sunrise Highway, which is why in my last letter I brought into the discussion climate adaptation. Among other actions, adaptation involves enhancing infrastructure. Let me mention an example that points to the need for adaptation.

After Superstorm Sandy, New York City launched AdaptNYC: “AdaptNYC identifies which residents and neighborhoods are the most at risk from the threats of climate change and the resiliency and adaptation measures the city is taking to protect them.” That was the proper response to severe flooding and the subsequent damage to the MTA’s transit system.

More recently, Super Typhoon Fung-Wong made landfall in the Philippines, and proceeded to destroy area flood control systems and dams, leading the president of the Philippines to declare a “state of calamity.” The storm brought to light the deficiencies in design, engineering and maintenance of those systems. More than 132 villages suffered severe damage.

Not just in the Philippines but elsewhere, storm intensity is increasing and becoming more damaging. While the Philippines struggles to recover from Typhoon Fung-Wong, Jamaica, likewise, struggles to recover from the rapidly intensified Category 5 Hurricane Melissa.

The American Society of Civil Engineers grades our stormwater and transit infrastructure as a D. So, I join with Mr. McArdle to urge our elected officials and regulatory agencies to prioritize improvements to all those things that make modern life functional.

It’s just too bad that when Donald Trump took office, one of the first things he did was to issue an executive order pausing the release of funds made available by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) — one of the last bipartisan measures to pass in Congress.

Your climate Cassandra signing off.

Mike Anthony

Westhampton

Anthony is a former chair of the Southampton Democratic Committee — Ed.