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As shown here, three of the four Delaware River Basin States are among the ten most flooded states in the nation, judged from a thirty year perspective. Pennsylvania is the eighth most flooded state in the country. All of the states nationwide that have higher flood losses than Pennsylvania are significantly coastal states. Pennsylvania has two small stretches of land that are considered coastal, but is otherwise essentially noncoastal. Home of one of the most catastrophic floods in recorded history, Pennsylvania is not only among the most flood prone states in the country, it also lags behind other flood-prone states in attending to the problem of flooding. The state has only one flood plain coordinator under the NFIP CAP-SSSE program, where it should have at least eight according to the NFIP report; it had until last year no association of floodplain managers, whereas the vast majority of states in the nation do; it has only a handful of communities who have sought to implement a Community Rating System (CRS) to address flooding; and it has adopted less protective regulations than its neighbors, such as New Jersey, which defines its floodways and draws its flood hazard maps to take into account future conditions. Easton itself suffered severely from the recent flooding of the Delaware River, ranking among the cities with the greatest losses from those floods, and has experienced more flood damage since 1978 than almost any of the nearly 2500 communities in Pennsylvania, ranking fifth in the state for the period, immediately behind Philadelphia.
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