Symposium on Flooding and Pennsylvania’s Historic River Towns
(The Final Day of the 2016 Pennsylvania Statewide Conference on Heritage)
Wednesday, June 8, 2016
9:00am – 4:00pm
The Campus Theatre, 413 Market Street, Lewisburg, PA

Throughout Pennsylvania’s early periods of development, its older communities settled along the banks of the state’s more than 86,000 miles of streams, during a time when rivers and creeks functioned as not only a vital source of human sustenance, but as sources of industrial power and the backbone of the Keystone State’s first transportation and commerce networks.

These early settlement patterns have led Pennsylvania to become one of the most flood vulnerable and flood-damaged states in the nation. The Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency has identified flooding as the single greatest natural threat to life and property in each of the state’s 67 counties; a threat which is only expected to become more severe in future years as a result of more intense and frequent heavy rainfall events. Since 1978, Pennsylvania communities have received nearly $1.2 billion in payments from the National Flood Insurance Program, covering damages from flood events.

While Pennsylvania’s historic river towns have been mostly resilient in the wake of several catastrophic floods, these communities may not fare as well in the future, following the federal government’s recent reforms to the National Flood Insurance Program which have already led to drastic increases in flood insurance premiums for a vast majority of the owners of flood-prone properties. These drastic increases in flood insurance premiums are already making it infeasible for many residents and business owners in historic river towns–where property values and incomes are modest–to remain in their homes and places of business. This change threatens the building stock and community fabric of historic districts throughout the Keystone State.

Join us in beautiful Lewisburg, where nearly 40% of the borough’s charming historic district is in the floodplain of the Susquehanna River. We’ll explore not only the implications of federal flood insurance reform on towns like Lewisburg and their historic districts, but also the complex issue of how to sensitively retrofit these towns’ historic buildings for flood mitigation purposes in a manner that preserves their character and integrity and will not preclude their historical designation.

The Symposium on Flooding and Pennsylvania’s Historic River Towns is intended for planners, preservationists, emergency managers, engineers, architects, floodplain managers, concerned citizens and property owners, and elected officials, and seeks to foster a common understanding of this critical issue and its challenges, as well as facilitate the development of new interdisciplinary alliances to address them.

Register today at http://www.paheritageconference.org!
Early Bird discounts available for registration until April 22.