Keeping Our Shores Safe and Sound
by Sonam Velani and Kathy ZhangNew York exists because of the water around it. It’s simply fact - the vast natural harbor at the mouth of the Hudson River was home to the Lenape Indians and the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam that settled back in 1624. Over the course of the past 400 years these waters have led to New York’s rise as a great port and the world’s great commercial power.
The 520 miles of coastlines along these fabled waters are now vulnerable to the impacts of sea level rise and coastal flooding. Since 1900, NYC’s sea level has risen ~12 inches; this is nearly twice as fast as the rest of the world and is quickly accelerating. In fact, the NYC Department of City Planning’s (DCP) has developed a Flood Hazard Mapper, which helps to illustrate this – areas in Southern Brooklyn and Queens that have the greatest projected flood risk.
NYC Department of City Planning’s Flood Hazard Mapper
In recent decades, events like Hurricane Sandy in 2012 have devastated NYC with dangerous storm surge and coastal flooding. Marginalized communities, such as those living in less-resilient housing and with limited means of mobility, are the most susceptible to storm-related fatalities.
In large areas of NYC, Hurricane Sandy knocked out power for days and flooded essential infrastructure such as subways, roads, and hospitals. NYC’s stormwater runoff and wastewater treatment facilities were overwhelmed during Sandy, and billions of gallons of sewage overflowed into our waterways.
High profile storms like Sandy have brought visibility not just to our city’s emergency response platforms, but also motivated proactive decision making across all levels of government: "We now embed sea-level projections into rebuilding policies… and understand the importance of having local climate risk information available on demand,” reflects Cynthia Rosenzweig, the former senior research scientist at the Columbia Climate School and Co-Chair of the New York City Panel on Climate Change.
All of these maps and numbers are now used as a part and parcel of NYC’s planning apparatus! The city has updated its building codes and adopted Zoning for Coastal Flood Resiliency to account for the impacts of sea level rise and coastal flooding. Though many real estate developers and homebuyers remain undeterred from investing in the waterfront, NYC government has started embedding climate resilience design into its capital projects in high risk areas.
Framework of how NYC’s Climate Resiliency Design Guidelines are developed & used.
More recently, in 2021 Hurricane Ida generated in-land flood heights as high as 4 feet in parts of Queens, highlighting the need for a range of localized community-centered solutions to address in-land flooding and sewage backup beyond large coastal barriers. Earlier this month, NY Governor Kathy Hochul announced $110 million in grants funding for 86 projects to improve water quality across the state, with a focus on Environmental Justice communities disproportionately impacted by environmental pollution. NYC DEP received $2 million to upgrade street medians with green infrastructure to help absorb excess rainwater and protect against flooding.
On the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Ida, NYC agencies in collaboration with NYU and CUNY launched FloodNet, the city’s first flood-monitoring network. The interactive map combines flood sensor data with citizen reports to show flood threats in real time, and an additional $7.2 million of city funding will expand the number of censors from 31 to 500 over the next five years.
FloodNet sensors in your streets and neighborhoods!
To reduce NYC’s coastal flood risk, construction on mega-infrastructure projects like the $1B+ East Side Coastal Resiliency (ESCR) Project and $900M Lower Manhattan Coastal Resiliency LMCR) Project are underway, with considerations for accessibility, and parks, and& recreation as core parts of the design. Although the 2021 federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act offers significant funding opportunities for NY resilience projects, local residents continue to push for local government to close the resiliency gaps within NYC with greater urgency, across funding, planning & implementation.
So, what can you do to get involved in your streets and neighborhoods? Educate yourselves on some of the issues your community is facing and explore all of the new policies, technologies, and community resilience programs that are underway. As NY Water Week gets started, there is no better time than now to drink from the fire hose!
by Sonam Velani and Kathy Zhang