By Gabbie Burton
Contributing Writer

Even as rain and the first snowfall of the winter season recently graced southern Chester County with their presence, the county continues to remain under drought watch status while the conversation about climate change in the county continues as well.

In recent interviews with the Chester County Press, six local stakeholders in various roles and expertise shared their insights, fears, facts, opinions and advice on the climate crisis. 

While the true definition of a “climate disaster” may not be happening in Chester County just yet, that doesn’t mean their impact isn’t felt or seen locally. Flora Cardoni, deputy director at PennEnvironment -- an environmental advocacy nonprofit -- explained how those disasters elsewhere can still impact the region.

“We might not be experiencing wildfires to the extent that they happen out west where it’s drier, we all experienced the orange skies because of the Canadian wildfires two summers ago and the air alerts when we weren’t supposed to go outside,” Cardoni said.

Additionally, Cardoni shared that it shouldn’t take a local disaster to recognize climate change occurring in the region.

“I would say we are experiencing the impacts in Pennsylvania, even though they’re a little bit more acute,” she said. “Every extreme hot summer or winter without snow should be a reminder that climate change is here, and we shouldn’t wait until we’re experiencing even worse impacts here just because we’re a little more insulated.”

Storms, flooding, erosion

How much longer Chester County can remain insulated is unclear, but projections give local authorities an idea of how worsening and more variable storms could be coming to the county.

SeungAh Byun, executive director of Chester County Water Resources Authority, shared that county projections show storm events including one-year storms (a storm that has a 100 percent chance of occurring in a year) all the way up to 1,000-year storm events (a storm that has a .10 percent chance of occurring in a year) all show more rain in a shorter amount of time. Additionally, Byun noted that climate change could lead to these rarer storm events becoming more frequent.

“We’ve seen it where the 100-year storm is no longer the 100-year storm.” Byun said. “The 500-year storm is becoming a 100-year storm, and the 100-year storm is becoming a 50-year storm.”

Jim Wylie, conservation co-chair of the southeastern Pa. group of Sierra Club, echoed Byun’s insights. Wylie has lived in Chester County since 1980 and during that time, he shared that he has seen more of those storm events and the negative impacts they have.

“I’ve seen the infrastructure be stressed, particularly, bridges over swollen creeks and part of that is due to over development, having less permeable surfaces and having more stormwater runoff when it starts to rain hard,” Wylie said. “But some of it’s also the intensity of the storms, number of inches of rain per hour that gets dropped.”

Along with these potential worsening storms comes flooding – an issue many across the county are already familiar with, including the scientists at the Stroud Water Research Center in Avondale.

“There’s a number of things that happen when we have big floods or big flood events, especially at the higher frequency that we’re seeing them,” said Diana Oviedo Vargas, an assistant research scientist at Stroud. “We have a lot more soil erosion, bank erosion, and they are also facilitating or accelerating the transport of contaminants from the watershed to the stream.”

These floods not only cause environmental degradation, but these contaminants can eventually enter water sources and potentially cause illness in the humans who consume them. However, the human impact doesn’t stop there. Floods and any other climate disasters disproportionately impact lower income communities. In addition, extreme heat disproportionately affects elderly communities who may be on fixed incomes and agricultural workers who have nowhere to hide from the rising temperatures.

“People who tend to live in the most flood prone areas are generally of a lower socioeconomic level than the people who live out of the flood prone areas,” said Rachael Griffith, Chester County’s first ever sustainability director. “They’re often the people who are least able to find another place to live or rent an apartment for a little while and so that definitely creates equity issues.”

As part of her responsibilities, Griffith is working to implement the county’s Climate Action Plan. Adopted in 2021, it aims to reduce greenhouse gas emission by 80 percent of 2005 levels by 2050 through both governmental and community initiatives.

“The Climate Action Plan is really the county showing its commitment as a local government to doing its part in this big global movement of reducing greenhouse gases,” Griffith said.

Current mitigation efforts Griffith oversees include transitioning the county fleet vehicles to electric vehicles, working with Homeowners Associations to increase sustainability in neighborhoods, planting trees, advancing municipal open space planning, installing solar panels at the county’s West Chester office building at 313 West Market Street and more.

While the county government and Griffith believe in the attainability of their goals, she also recognizes the limits that come with working in climate change mitigation.

“I don’t think that we adopted the plan to avoid any climate disasters because I think the disasters are here and they’re also coming,” she said. “But everybody has to take action, and everybody has to do their part because if we don’t, then the disasters will be much worse.”

Fighting to build a better world

Jenna Benke, a senior at Wilson College currently studying environmental sustainability and animal studies, has lived in Oxford all her life. She shared that her biggest concern for climate change’s local effects is agriculture.

“There’s going be a point where our crops that we’ve been growing just won’t be able to sustain the heat,” Benke said. “With a lower yield, then the Amish community and farmers are going to start using more fertilizers, then that’s going to lead to more nutrient sediment pollution into our watershed.”

Benke said that she is concerned that local community members may be hesitant to change their ways because of a focus on making money rather than spending money to mitigate the potential adverse outcomes of climate change. She said that government subsidies for sustainable farming as a potential aid in encouraging farmers to take on the practice. For the rest of the community, however, she hopes the summer heat waves and lacking winter snowfall will encourage people to accept climate change as a real threat and engage in individual action to help address it.

Ultimately, for Chester County to effectively meet the demands of climate change, individual action has been heavily encouraged. Reducing energy usage, planting more trees, participating in government activism and shifting to a plant-based diet were among the steps recommended by those who were interviewed. Even with mentions of strong individual action and faith in local government action, there was still largely a feeling of pessimism and fear hanging over the discussions about national and global effects of climate change.

Benke, though she admitted to feeling pessimistic about climate change, also shared that she feels there’s no need for fear mongering in conversations surrounding climate change as it does no good for anyone.

“People are scared of climate change and yes, it’s a scary topic, but I don’t think we need to be petrified of it,” Benke said. “I think people are just now becoming frozen in fear and they feel like they can't make a difference even though they can.”

Regardless of the fears and the uncertainties that remain, hope prevails for those active against the crisis.

“I'm doing this job because I know that a better world and a greener and cleaner world is possible,” Cardoni said. “I go to work every day fighting to build that better world.”

To contact Contributing Writer Gabbie Burton, email [email protected].