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New York Faces Rising Seas and Slow City Action -
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http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/11/nyregion/new-york-faces-rising-seas-and-slow-city-action.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all[9/12/2012
1:05:33 PM]
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New York Is Lagging as Seas and Risks Rise, CriticsWarn
Michael Kamber for The New York Times
Sea walls, marshes and trees in Brooklyn Bridge Park, part of
efforts by New York City agencies to cope with rising seas.
By MIREYA NAVARROPublished: September 10, 2012 23 Comments
With a 520-mile-long coast lined largely by teeming roads
andfragile infrastructure, New York City is gingerly facing up to
theintertwined threats posed by rising seas and
ever-more-severestorm flooding.
So far, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberghas commissioned
exhaustiveresearch on the challenge of climatechange. His
administration isexpanding wetlands to accommodatesurging tides,
installing green roofs toabsorb rainwater and proddingproperty
owners to move boilers outof flood-prone basements.
But even as city officials earn high marks forenvironmental
awareness, critics say New York is movingtoo slowly to address the
potential for flooding that couldparalyze transportation, cripple
the low-lying financialdistrict and temporarily drive hundreds of
thousands of
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New York Faces Rising Seas and Slow City Action -
NYTimes.com
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/11/nyregion/new-york-faces-rising-seas-and-slow-city-action.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all[9/12/2012
1:05:33 PM]
Michael Appleton for The New York Times
Battery Park after Hurricane Irene, bythen a tropical storm, hit
a year ago.Low-lying areas of New York City arevulnerable to
storms.
Enlarge This Image
Michael Kamber for The New York Times
Raised ventilation grates, like these inLower Manhattan, are
intended todeal with flooding in the subwaysystem during severe
storms.
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people from their homes.
Only a year ago, they point out, the city shut down thesubway
system and ordered the evacuation of 370,000people as Hurricane
Irene barreled up the Atlantic coast.Ultimately, the hurricane
weakened to a tropical stormand spared the city, but it exposed how
New York is yearsaway from — and billions of dollars short of —
armoringitself.
“They lack a sense of urgency about this,” said DouglasHill, an
engineer with the Storm Surge Research Group atStony Brook
University, on Long Island.
Instead of “planning to be flooded,” as he put it, city,
stateand federal agencies should be investing in protection likesea
gates that could close during a storm and block asurge from Long
Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean intothe East River and New York
Harbor.
Others express concern for areas like the South Bronx andSunset
Park in Brooklyn, which have large industrial
waterfronts with chemical-manufacturing plants, oil-storage
sites and garbage-transferstations. Unless hazardous materials are
safeguarded with storm surges in mind, somelocal groups warn,
residents could one day be wading through toxic water.
“A lot of attention is devoted to Lower Manhattan, but you
forget that you have realindustries on the waterfront” elsewhere in
the city, said Eddie Bautista, executivedirector of the New York
City Environmental Justice Alliance, which represents low-income
residents of industrial areas. “We’re behind in
consciousness-building anddisaster planning.”
Other cities are also tackling these issues, at their own
pace.
New shoreline development around San Francisco Bay must now be
designed to copewith the anticipated higher sea levels under new
regional regulations imposed last fall.In Chicago, new bike lanes
and parking spaces are made of permeable pavement thatallows
rainwater to filter through it. Charlotte, N.C., and Cedar Falls,
Iowa, arerestricting development in flood plains. Maryland is
pressing shoreline property ownersto plant marshland instead of
building retaining walls.
Officials in New York caution that adapting a city of eight
million people to climatechange is infinitely more complicated and
that the costs must be weighed against therelative risks of
flooding. The last time a hurricane made landfall directly in New
YorkCity was more than a century ago.
Many decisions also require federal assistance, like updated
flood maps from the FederalEmergency Management Agency that
incorporate sea level rise, and agreement fromdozens of public
agencies and private partners that own transportation,
energy,telecommunications and other infrastructure.
“It’s a million small changes that need to happen,” said Adam
Freed, until August thedeputy director of the city’s Office of
Long-Term Planning and Sustainability.“Everything you do has to be
a calculation of the risks and benefits and costs you face.”
And in any case, Mr. Freed said, “you can’t make a climate-proof
city.”
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New York Faces Rising Seas and Slow City Action -
NYTimes.com
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/11/nyregion/new-york-faces-rising-seas-and-slow-city-action.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all[9/12/2012
1:05:33 PM]
So city officials are pursuing a so-called resilience strategy
that calls for strengtheningthe city’s ability to weather the
effects of serious flooding and recover from it.
Flooding Threat Grows
Unlike New Orleans, New York City is above sea level. Yet the
city is second only to NewOrleans in the number of people living
less than four feet above high tide — nearly200,000 New Yorkers,
according to the research group Climate Central.
The waters on the city’s doorstep have been rising roughly an
inch a decade over the lastcentury as oceans have warmed and
expanded. But according to scientists advising thecity, that rate
is accelerating, because of environmental factors, and levels could
rise twofeet higher than today’s by midcentury. More frequent
flooding is expected to become anuncomfortable reality.
With higher seas, a common storm could prove as damaging as the
rare big storm orhurricane is today, scientists say. Were sea
levels to rise four feet by the 2080s, forexample, 34 percent of
the city’s streets could lie in the flood-risk zone, compared
withjust 11 percent now, a 2011 study commissioned by the state
said.
New York has added bike lanes, required large buildings to track
and reduce their energyuse, banned the dirtiest home heating oils,
and taken other steps to reduce the emissionsthat contribute to
global warming. But with shoreline development that ranges
frompublic beaches to towering high rises — and a complex mix of
rivers, estuaries, bays andocean — the city needs to size up the
various risks posed by rising seas before plungingahead with vast
capital projects or strict regulations, city officials argue.
Yet the city’s plan for waterfront development dismisses any
notion of retreat from theshoreline. Curbing development or buying
up property in flood plains, as some smallercities have done, is
too impractical here, city officials say, especially because the
cityanticipates another million residents over the next two
decades.
Rather, the city and its partners are incorporating
flood-protection measures intoprojects as they go along.
Consolidated Edison, the utility that supplies electricity to
most of the city, estimatesthat adaptations like installing
submersible switches and moving high-voltagetransformers above
ground level would cost at least $250 million. Lacking the means,
itis making gradual adjustments, with about $24 million spent in
flood zones since 2007.
Some steps taken by city agencies have already subtly altered
the city’s looks. AtBrooklyn Bridge Park, a buffer between the East
River and neighborhoods like Dumbo,porous riprap rock and a soft
edge of salt-resistant grass have been laid in to help absorbthe
punch of a storm surge. Sidewalk bioswales, or vegetative tree pits
that can fill upwith rainwater to reduce storm water and sewage
overflows and also minimize flooding,are popping up around the
city.
Over all, the city is hoping to funnel more than $2 billion of
public and private money tosuch environmental projects over the
next 18 years, officials say.
“It’s a series of small interventions that cumulatively, over
time, will take us to a morenatural system” to deal with climate
change, said Carter H. Strickland, the city’senvironmental
commissioner.
Planning experts say it is hard to muster public support for
projects with uncertain ordistant benefits.
“There’s a lot of concern about angering developers,” said Ben
Chou, a water-policy
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New York Faces Rising Seas and Slow City Action -
NYTimes.com
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/11/nyregion/new-york-faces-rising-seas-and-slow-city-action.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all[9/12/2012
1:05:33 PM]
analyst at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
New York planners have proposed requiring developers to assess
the climate-changerisks faced by new buildings so they can consider
protection like retractable watertightgates for windows. But no
such requirements have been imposed so far.
While some new buildings are being elevated or going above
current required floodprotections — like a new recycling plant on a
Brooklyn pier and the Port Authority’stransit hub at the World
Trade Center site — most new construction is not being adaptedto
future flood risks yet, industry representatives said.
Some experts argue that the encounter with Hurricane Irene last
year and a flash floodin 2007 underscored the dangers of deferring
aggressive solutions.
Klaus H. Jacob, a research scientist at Columbia University’s
Earth Institute, said thestorm surge from Irene came, on average,
just one foot short of paralyzingtransportation into and out of
Manhattan.
If the surge had been just that much higher, subway tunnels
would have flooded,segments of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive and
roads along the Hudson River wouldhave turned into rivers, and
sections of the commuter rail system would have beenimpassable or
bereft of power, he said.
The most vulnerable systems, like the subway tunnels under the
Harlem and EastRivers, would have been unusable for nearly a month,
or longer, at an economic loss ofabout $55 billion, said Mr. Jacob,
an adviser to the city on climate change and an authorof the 2011
state study that laid out the flooding prospects.
“We’ve been extremely lucky,” he said. “I’m disappointed that
the political process hasn’trecognized that we’re playing Russian
roulette.”
With more rain and higher seas, some envision more turmoil —
like mile after mile ofapartment buildings without working
elevators, lights or potable water.
“That’s a key vulnerability,” said Rafael Pelli, a Manhattan
architect who serves on aclimate-change committee that advises the
Department of City Planning. “If you have torelocate 10,000 people,
how do you do that?”
Barriers to Block Tides
Some New Yorkers argue that the answer lies not in evacuation,
but in prevention, likearmoring city waterways with the latest
high-tech barriers. Others are not so sure.
At a recent meeting of Manhattan community board leaders in
Harlem, RobertTrentlyon, a resident of Chelsea, argued for sea
gates.
A 2004 study by Mr. Hill and the Storm Surge Research Group at
Stony Brookrecommended installing movable barriers at the upper end
of the East River, near theThrogs Neck Bridge; under the
Verrazano-Narrows Bridge; and at the mouth of theArthur Kill,
between Staten Island and New Jersey. During hurricanes and
northeasters,closing the barriers would block a huge tide from
flooding Manhattan and parts of theBronx, Brooklyn, Queens, Staten
Island and New Jersey, they said.
City officials say that sea barriers are among the options being
studied, but others saysuch gates could interfere with aquatic
ecosystems and with the flushing out ofpollutants, and may
eventually fail as sea levels keep rising.
And then there is the cost. Installing barriers for New York
could reach nearly $10billion.
http://www.earth.columbia.edu/articles/view/1791http://stormy.msrc.sunysb.edu/link
files/Phase I Combined
Report.pdfhttp://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/h/hurricanes_and_tropical_storms/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier
-
New York Faces Rising Seas and Slow City Action -
NYTimes.com
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/11/nyregion/new-york-faces-rising-seas-and-slow-city-action.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all[9/12/2012
1:05:33 PM]
A version of this article appeared in print on September 11,
2012, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline:New York
Is Lagging as Seas And Risks Rise, Critics Warn.
23 CommentsShare your thoughts.
Newest Write a Comment
Global Warming
Subways
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Hurricanes and Tropical Storms
Floods
There is more agreement on how to protect the subway system.
Several studies haveadvised the Metropolitan Transportation
Authority to move quickly to increase pumpingcapacity at stations,
raise entrances and design floodgates to block water from
entering.
In 2009, a commission warned that global warming posed “a new
and potentially direchallenge for which the M.T.A. system is
largely unprepared.”
Five years ago, a summer-morning deluge brought about 3 1/2
inches of rain in twohours and paralyzed the system for hours,
stranding 2.5 million riders.
That prompted the transit agency to spend $34 million on
improvements like raisingsome ventilation grates nine inches above
sidewalks and building steps that headupward, before descending, at
flood-prone stations. All the money came from theagency’s capital
budget, which also pays for subway cars and buses.
“This is a vicious circle of the worst kind,” Projjal Dutta, the
transportation agency’sdirector of sustainability, said of the
financial effect. “You’re cutting publictransportation, which cuts
down greenhouse gases, to harden against climate change.”
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