WWW.Billybytes.Com/Blog/’s Response to LANTA’s Environmental Assessment for Riverwalk
To the Delaware-Lenni Lenape Native Americans, what today are known as the Delaware and the Lehigh rivers were known as two branches of the same body of water - with the Lehigh River forming the western branch.
Because the city of Easton was settled at the confluence of these two branches, the Native Americans called it the “Forks of the Delaware.”
Today, a symbolic water course has superseded the confluence of the Delaware and Lehigh rivers. I call it the Easton Riverwalk Intermodal-parking garage-shopping center-luxury condominium/Bethlemem Intermodal-Sands BethWorks Gaming LLC confluence.
The former lies in the flood plain of the Delaware (and Bushkill Creek) .
The latter lies in the flood plain of the Lehigh River.
Both are as destructive to the health and safety of the so-called “Lehigh Valley” as the last three floods that have struck in the last two years, beginning with the ravaging flood waters from Hurriance Ivan.
I have described this symblic confluence in numerous articles:
First, on the www.billybytes.com Website in an article titled “Flood Plain,” dated April 28, 2005.
Second, on www.billybytes.com/blog/ postings, such as the one titled “Shad Season 2007,” dated May 6, 2007.
And in a blog posting titled “The Top-Down Construction Plan for Riverwalk,” dated July 29, 2007, I wrote:
“The Morning Call staffer Tracy Jordan writes in the July 24, 2007 edition of her publication that the Federal Transit Administration has ‘ordered a review for Riverwalk.’
“She quoted the chairman of the Easton Parking Authority, Lou ‘Mr. Easton’ Ferrano, as saying ‘The authority will proceed with its construction plans. It will be up to LANTA [Lehigh and Northampton Transportation Authority] to satisfy the Federal Transit Administration’s requirements for an environmental assessment.”
In other words, Mr Easton and his parking authority plan to position cranes in the upper-level parking lot behind the Governor George Wolf building and build Riverwalk from the top down - a constraint imposed by the fact that the LANTA bus terminal, or intermodal, forms the ground level foundation on top of which Riverwalk’s developer, Arcadia properties, would build 147 luxury condominiums, a high-end shopping center, and a parking garage capable of accommodating 500-plus vehicles.
Copyright © 2006-2008 Billy Givens
Billy Givens said,
November 16, 2007 @ 4:24 pm
I was only half-jesting when I testified last evening before LANTA that Riverwalk would be built from the top down. It all started with the decision to move, in the midst of active play, the goal post of downtown Easton, Pennsylvania’s, economic recovery from luring people as transient, day-tripping tourists to the goal of making them permanent residents.
This decision was the product of a “public-private partnership,” the public component consisting of the city of the Pennsylvania commonwealth, Northampton County and its seat Easton, and LANTA, the bi-county transportation authority comprised of Lehigh and Northampton counties.
The private half of the partnership consists of the developer Arcadia Properties and Lafayette College, under the aegis of Pennsylvania’s Keystone Innovation Zone, or KIZ, enacted by the state’s legislature and signed by its Governor Edward G. Rendell in 2004.
Testifying before LANTA gave me the opportunity to make another nexus; i.e., the similarity between Easton’s proposed Riverwalk project and the Sands BethWorks Gaming Casino LLC in Easton’s neighboring city of Bethlehem - specifically, the latter’s South Side neighborhood lying on the south bank and in the 100-year flood plain of the Lehigh River (originally known, before its name was changed, the western branch of the Delaware River).
What Easton’s Riverwalk and Bethlehem’s Sands BethWorks Gaming Casino LLC have in common is that both cities are in violation of federal, state, county, and local municipality statutes, comprehensive plans, and ordinances prohibiting development in the 100-year flood plain.
These various regulations governing development in flood plains are required when such development uses public funds.
This is the case not only with the so-called “Lehigh Valley’s” cities of Easton and Bethlehem but to their sister city Allentown as well.
All three cities have transit terminals, or intermodals as defined by the Federal Transporation Administration, and all three projects are funded with taxpayer money at some level of government.
The special-interest projects are known as “pork,” or, as a more elegant name, “earmarks.”