Bad weather has derailed many politicians.

Recall that when Gov. Chris Christie was riding high in the winter of his first term, he took off to Florida while Lieutenant Governor Kim Guadagno was away as well. When the state was hit by a blizzard, both the governor and his number two were out of town. This was probably the first time the governor got widespread public criticism.

Christie certainly tried to overcompensate during future storms – recall his impressive performance during Sandy and his earlier exhortation to “get the hell off the beach” – but the damage had been done.

Phil Murphy likely knows the history.

The governor started off a press appearance Tuesday on an unrelated matter by talking about the recent rash of heavy rain and accompanying floods.

He noted that he had spent Monday evening in Woodland Park and Little Falls and that about 400 homes were damaged in both those two towns alone.

“The scene was heart breaking, heart wrenching,” he said.

The governor said he had declared a state of emergency in five counties – Bergen, Essex, Passaic, Ocean and Monmouth. An official state of emergency expedites sending financial aid to hard-hit areas.
Stressing his pro-active stance in this matter, Murphy said he made the declaration without being asked to do so.

Quickly responding to storms is one thing. Prevention is an altogether different matter.

Saying this was a movie he doesn’t want to see again, the governor said, “Our goal is to create more resilient towns.”  A few minutes later, he said, “We must be better prepared.”

All this is well and good, but good planning may be far more complicated than the governor grasps at the moment.

On one hand, the amount of rain that has fallen over parts of the state the last few days has been unusually heavy.

But at the same time, there is nothing new about flooding in Little Falls and Woodland Park, the places Murphy visited on Monday.

Solving this problem long term would mean not developing in flood-prone areas and buying up structures already there. Moreover, one needs to have the guts to think years ahead. Some may recall more than 30 years ago, plans surfaced to build a tunnel under the Passaic River to carry water out to sea and to ease flooding in such places as Little Falls.

It never happened.

If Murphy truly wants to create more resilient communities, large-scale public works projects need to be considered.

Curiously, the governor was talking about coping with what he called “100-minute storms” at an event dedicated to making public construction quicker and less costly.

Officially, Murphy signed a bill to encourage more public private partnerships among government entities and private companies. The concept allows private companies to underwrite and to build public projects. The company takes the financial risk and sometimes leases the project back to the public entity.
Murphy’s appearance was at one of the success stories of such partnerships – Campus Town at The College of New Jersey. This is sort of a village within a campus that includes apartments, restaurants and other shops.

This was bipartisan legislation, as evidenced by the presence of state Sen., Steve Oroho, a conservative Republican from Sussex County.

Also on hand and praising the governor were an assortment of construction company and union officials.

If only coping with floods was this easy.