In timely stories from other news organizations, a report on how state and federal authorities are planning to “future-proof” against increasingly frequent extreme weather events. Also, an article describing how, even with investment returns and deposits that reduce pension liabilities, the state still has a debt mountain to climb.

Building for resilience

“Flooding has clearly become Connecticut’s biggest climate problem,” reports Jan Ellen Spiegel in the Connecticut Mirror.

The August 18 storm that devastated parts of Fairfield, Litchfield, and New Haven counties was not an outlier, she writes. In each of several recent years, the state has been hit by extreme weather, sometimes in the same places as before. This one was unusual in its intensity.

The article describes how investment and preparation in Southbury may have paid off this year by containing recovery costs. It also reports on a new resilience fund launched by the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP), and how Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) disaster relief funds come with new rules for “more stringent construction standards … and other mitigation strategies” that carry up-front costs but could return savings from “future-proofing.”

Read the full story in the Connecticut Mirror.

Still a hill to climb on pension liabilities

In CTNewsJunkie, Jamil Ragland reports that $608.2 million in surplus revenues were deposited into the pension funds for retired teachers and state workers, due in part to the funds exceeding projected investment figures this year and last with double-digit returns.

The result comes, Mr. Ragland writes, “as the state continues to play catch-up with its massive unfunded pension liabilities.”

The report quotes State Treasurer Erick Russell as saying the pension fund deposit “accelerates the speed at which we can pay down legacy pension debt inherited by the current generation of Connecticut taxpayers” and saves taxpayers money by reducing annual contributions in the state budget.

The report cites two studies that explain how the state’s pension liabilities burden became so severe, and concludes that “Connecticut’s performance relative to other states still places it near the top of states facing huge burdens.”

Read the full story in CTNewsJunkie.

Correction: In the original version of this article, we erred in two respects describing the Connecticut Mirror story on flooding. We should have made clear, as the Mirror reported, that while the severe August 18 weather was not “an outlier,” its intensity was. We should have also made clear that the apparent degree of success in Southbury to mitigate storm damage was the result of longstanding local efforts, not a product of DEEP’s Climate Resilience Fund, which is new. We regret these errors, and have addressed them in this edition.