A plan would wall off long stretches of beloved waterfront while leaving many areas vulnerable.
When Hurricane Sandy tore through New York City in 2012, it knocked out power to Lower Manhattan and carved a path of destruction through affected areas. Climate change will make once-in-a-generation floods like those caused by that hurricane much more likely, which is why the Army Corps of Engineers was asked to come up with a plan to protect the New York-New Jersey metro area from the next storm surge. |
This is not an easy task. New York City has over 500 miles of shoreline to protect — more than Boston, Miami, San Francisco and Los Angeles combined — making it very vulnerable to floods. |
After millions of dollars and many years of study, the corps came up with a plan that primarily relies on walls, levees and berms placed along the city's shoreline. The problem, as Bob Yaro and Daniel Gutman point out in a guest essay today, is that this will block waterfront access and yet still leaves large parts of the city, including many lower-income areas, unprotected. |
Of particular interest to us were the walls. As proposed, they tower at 12 feet to 20 feet and are placed in some of the city's most beloved parks. One of the joys of living in New York is your proximity to waterfront, even if it makes the city vulnerable to floods. What we wanted the visuals to do is show how these walls would affect that relationship. |
The results are stark. Large lengths of Hudson River Park (including the entrance of Little Island) would sit behind a wall. Whole blocks of Red Hook would be barricaded. Walls in Gantry State Park and Greenpoint Park would block sweeping views of Midtown Manhattan. |
Yaro and Gutman argue that it doesn't necessarily have to be this way. There are alternatives that would preserve the beauty of the city's waterfront and protect more people. They advocate storm surge barriers that would sit in the city's waterways (instead of the shoreline) and be raised only in the event of a major flood. This is an approach many flood-prone cities in Europe have adopted. |
The clock is ticking. The corps has a few weeks to decide whether to continue down its chosen path or adopt an alternative. But Yaro and Gutman are hopeful, writing that cities like Miami and Houston pushed back and were able to get their plans changed. |
"For the sake of our shorelines and the communities excluded by the current plan," they write, "we should insist that the same thing happen here." |
Here's what we're focusing on today: |
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