Mayor Menino Talks Climate Change On Sandy Anniversary

By Andrea Belaval 10-30-13

image: Andrea Belaval / WEBN Correspondent

One-year after Superstorm Sandy devastated the East Coast, Mayor Menino talked about climate change.

Today he visited the Aquarium’s IMAX theater to release the “Climate Ready Boston: Municipal Vulnerability to Climate Change” report. He outlined the steps the city has taken to ensure environmental sustainability and readiness against climate changes.

“Since 2005, we have reduced municipal greenhouse gas emissions by approximately 26%. More importantly I believe that climate work is an ongoing effort,” said Menino.

Brian Swett, Chief of Environment and Energy for the city of Boston, introduced the Mayor who then stressed that if Sandy had hit at high tide then part of Boston would have been flooded.  That concept forced Menino to create initiatives that would lessen the damage in that type of situation.

“I’ve said this year that we will update the city’s climate work to deal with threats from storms like Sandy. If Sandy had hit us a few hours earlier, our city would have experienced a hundred year flood,” said Menino.

The Mayor plans on lessening the damage of storms and other natural disasters by figuring out how prepared the city is now and improving safety procedures as well as creating new ones.

Henry Vitale, Executive Director of the Boston Sewer Commission, said that readiness is the most important plan at this point.

“It is unavoidable. Those are a hundred year storms but we’re going to do everything we can to prepare the residents of the city of Boston for whatever happens in the future,” said Vitale.