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.”