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Mud and water from the Allegheny River flood James Sharp Landing in Sharpsburg, Feb. 25, 2022.
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Pa. municipalities have a big climate tab coming due. Who should foot the bill?

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Pa. municipalities have a big climate tab coming due. Who should foot the bill?

By 2040, the annual cost of dealing with climate change’s unwelcome scenery — more rain, more heat — will run Pennsylvania municipalities an extra $15 billion, according to a study released by the Center for Climate Integrity this week.

The study looked at the stormwater, road repair, air conditioning, and other climate adaptation needs of communities across the state, using a model that calculated the cost to deal with them and matching that against municipal budgets.

The city of Pittsburgh, the study said, will face $523 million in extra costs to protect its infrastructure and residents from more frequent flooding and severe heat. Included in that figure are:

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  • $382 million to expand stormwater drainage capacity
  • $20 million to plant and maintain trees in urban spaces to prevent heat islands
  • $1.6 million to maintain cooling centers for vulnerable residents
  • $20.8 million to install air conditioning in public schools
  • $8.6 million in bridge maintenance
  • $85 million to prevent landslides

Where will that money come from? The Washington, D.C.-based group that supplied the calculations hopes to nudge those municipalities to sue big oil and gas companies to pay the extra costs.

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“Pennsylvania taxpayers are currently on the hook for local municipalities’ climate adaptation costs, but they shouldn’t have to be,” the report said. “A more just alternative is to make the polluters most responsible for the climate crisis pay their fair share of the costs facing Pennsylvania communities.”

Dozens of states and municipalities across the U.S. have filed climate liability lawsuits against large oil and gas firms, including Exxon Mobil, Shell, and BP, alleging they knew that their products would aggravate climate change but hid that from the public. Some of these lawsuits rely on consumer protection laws. Others are grounded in the “polluter pays” principle. Some even allege racketeering.

“Pennsylvania and its local governments should consider similar legal action to ensure that taxpayers aren’t left to pay the bill alone,” the group advised.

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The numbers in the report represent the damages that municipalities can claim in a legal complaint, according to the group.

Sharpsburg mayor Brittany Reno said during a virtual meeting on Tuesday that she’s been wanting to see a report like this for a while, but was afraid of what it might show.

“Climate change here in Sharpsburg, it’s not really a partisan issue,” she said. “It’s actually a public safety nightmare.”

Her city sits at the edge of four water sheds — “like a cup at the bottom of four tunnels,” Ms. Reno said. “I have neighbors that were rescued by a raft that paddled up to their front door.”

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She shared the Center for Climate Integrity’s stance that taxpayers shouldn’t be the only ones to pay for climate-resilient infrastructure.

“We’re doing so much locally attempting to address these problems that are so much bigger than our square mile,” she said. “But the polluters are not doing their fair share.”

The study singled out several townships in Westmoreland County — including Hempfield and Unity — as case studies.

Hempfield will need to spend nearly $10 million a year for things like improving stormwater drainage and road repairs, the study predicted, setting the figure against its current municipal budget of $16.3 million.

In Unity Township, where municipal expenses total $7.6 million today, the study projects an extra $8.1 million annual outlay for climate impact mitigation. Landslides alone will be a $3.5 million annual burden for the township, according to the study’s modeling.

Unity, a township of about 21,000 residents, has been dealing with flooding for years, said Mike O’Barto, chairman of the township’s board of supervisors. One day last August, parts of the township got six inches of rain in less than two hours, overwhelming creeks and ditches, he recalled.

“We tried to look for money from the state, the federal government,” Mr. O’Barto said, “but there isn’t any money available. ... And insurance claims do not cover any of these situations at all — not unless you have flood insurance.”

Still, Mr. O’Barto, who was not aware of the Center for Climate Integrity study, said he doesn’t see the logic in filing lawsuits against oil and gas companies.

“Tell me what happens if we file a lawsuit?” he said. If the municipality wins, “who’s going to be the loser? It’ll be the people who are buying gasoline, oil, etc. I don’t see a winner out of this at all.”

Joe Minott, executive director of the Clean Air Council, an environmental group that has sued oil and gas companies over permits and pollution violations, said he doesn’t know of any municipalities in Pennsylvania entertaining legal action against companies for climate damages.

But that doesn’t mean it’s not happening.

“I am sure it is being discussed — other cities are doing it,” he said.

At the virtual meeting, Mr. Minott praised the report and called on Pennsylvania officials “at all levels of government to stand up to the lying and bullying” from fossil fuel companies.

“They caused the problem. They must pay to clean it up.”

One way or another, the costs will come due. 

Grant Ervin, who served as the chief resilience officer for the city of Pittsburgh until early last year, said the city had to rethink the way it structures its budget to build in climate considerations at every level.

“No city has the budget to do the things that they need to do at the scale it requires,” he said. “We need to build stuff now” to harden infrastructure against climate change impacts.

Mr. Ervin now works with municipalities wearing a different hat — he’s director of environmental, social, governance and innovation with S&B USA Construction. In the rearview mirror, he sees the roadblocks that municipalities face in building systems that make their communities livable in a changing climate.

One is their procurement process, which makes it hard to bundle projects or work with other municipalities to fund infrastructure that would serve an entire region, he said.

The other is the slow adoption of public-private partnerships, which incentivize corporations to take on some of the work that municipalities need to ensure the needs of their residents.

“Cities that are figuring that out — how to use finance and use new models — are best prepared to address that climate risk,” he said.

Anya Litvak: alitvak@post-gazette.com 

First Published: July 28, 2023, 9:30 a.m.
Updated: July 28, 2023, 11:03 p.m.

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Mud and water from the Allegheny River flood James Sharp Landing in Sharpsburg, Feb. 25, 2022.  (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)
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