Mayor Bloomberg outlined ideas Tuesday to prepare the city for future storms including possibly building “Seaport City,” a neighborhood patterned after Battery Park City.
BY TERESE LOEB KREUZER | When Superstorm Sandy struck Manhattan on October 29, 2012, the storm flooded Chelsea Piers with about five feet of water. The water surged through Chelsea’s art galleries — damaging and destroying artwork, cutting off heat and electricity and leaving many galleries closed for months. The water spread as far inland as 10th Avenue.
But this may have been a mere prelude to far worse destruction.
“As bad as Sandy was, future storms could be even worse,” said Mayor Michael Bloomberg on June 11, as he spoke at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. There, in the place where battleships were once built, he introduced a plan to protect New York City. “In fact, because of rising temperatures and sea levels, even a storm that’s not as large as Sandy could — down the road — be even more destructive.”
In the immediate aftermath of the storm, as the City addressed the urgent need to help restore services, shelter the homeless, aid devastated communities and get businesses open again, it began to address another urgent need — how to protect New York City from climate. Its effects could include not only storms and storm surges, but heat waves, droughts and intense downpours.
In December 2012, Mayor Bloomberg announced the formation of the Special Initiative for Rebuilding and Resiliency, charging it with creating a plan to shield New York’s infrastructure, buildings and communities in the medium term (2020s) and the long term (2050s).
The mayor asked the committee to pay special attention to the City’s five hardest-hit neighborhoods — one of which was southern Manhattan, including Chelsea. At the June 11 event, Bloomberg introduced the Initiative’s plan. In a 440-page report called “A Stronger, More Resilient New York,” the City identified 15 critical areas that must be addressed. These include coastal defenses, buildings, utilities, food and fuel supply, healthcare, transportation and telecommunications.
New York City has 520 miles of coastline. In a June 10 report, the New York City Panel on Climate Change, comprised of climatologists from leading universities in New York and New Jersey, predicts that sea levels in New York City could rise by more than two-and-a-half feet by mid-century. This would mean that up to one-quarter of the city’s land area, where 800,000 people live today, would be in the floodplain.
“If we do nothing, more than 40 miles of our waterfront could see flooding on a regular basis, just during normal high tides,” Bloomberg said.
Sandy cost the city $19 billion in damages and lost economic activity. According to forecasts, by mid-century a storm like Sandy would cost the city $90 billion.
“This leaves us with a few clear choices,” said Bloomberg. “We can do nothing and expose ourselves to an increasing frequency of Sandy-like storms that do more and more damage, or we can abandon the waterfront. Or, we can make the investments necessary to build a stronger, more resilient New York — investments that will pay for themselves many times over in the years to come.”
Bloomberg has said repeatedly that the city cannot — and will not — abandon the waterfront. Some of the protective work has already begun, while other parts of it will require further study and significant financing.
Sandy showed that the entire shorefront of southern Manhattan is vulnerable to coastal flooding. This vulnerability is expected to increase rapidly.
The mayor proposes to create an integrated flood protection system comprised of temporary and permanent features and landscaping and drainage improvements in Chelsea, Tribeca, the West Village, Stuyvesant Town and Kips Bay. This would be fully deployed only during pre-storm conditions. At other times, it would be as inconspicuous as possible.
As with many other proposals in the report, it would be “subject to available funding.”
In southern Manhattan, there are more than 170 landmarked buildings in the floodplain, including buildings in portions of 19 historic districts. Chelsea has two historic districts. One extends from 10th Avenue almost to Eighth Avenue and from West 23rd Street almost to 19th Street. The second one lies between the Hudson River and Tenth Avenue and between West 24th Street and West 28th Street, bordering the High Line.
The report states that regulations will be issued in 2013 clarifying how landmarked structures in the 100-year floodplain can and should be retrofitted.
It also says that planned and ongoing investments by the City and private partners in the High Line will continue despite many other demands on the City’s coffers. Construction of the final section of the park will bring it to 34th Street, and is supposed to be completed in 2014.
The City also plans to reconstruct and resurface key streets damaged by Sandy, including some in Chelsea. Citywide, there are 60 lane miles of streets severely damaged by Sandy that the New York City Department of Transportation has to reconstruct. It will repave approximately 500 lane miles of streets with damaged surfaces. Where possible, the reconstructed streets will include resiliency measures to minimize further damage. This work will begin in 2013 with funding from federal and city sources.
The report notes that one-quarter of the City’s parks are in the 100-year flood plain. Hudson River Park, which runs in part along the Chelsea waterfront, is among them. As sea levels rise, the 100-year floodplain is expected to take in more residential and commercial areas. The parks act as a buffer to flooding and are, themselves, in need of protection. Strategies could include hardening or elevating park infrastructure, construction of levees or floodwalls to minimize flooding and attenuate waves and using flood-tolerant materials in the construction of parks. The City plans to study the possibilities and to complete that study in 2014.
On another front, local commercial corridors such as 10th and 11th Avenues and 23rd Street in Chelsea were devastated by Sandy. The City is asking the Public Service Commission and Con Edison to amend the preferential Business Incentive Rate (BIR) program, which discounts Con Edison’s electric delivery charges, to allow it to be extended to small businesses in southern Manhattan and the other four communities hardest hit by Sandy.
Businesses and nonprofits with 10 or fewer employees that have received support from City-sponsored loan and grant programs will be eligible for the discount for five years up to a maximum of $50,000 per business or nonprofit. The maximum aggregate benefit available in southern Manhattan will be $1 million. In addition to Chelsea, this money will go to businesses and nonprofits in lower Manhattan (Water Street, the South Street Seaport and Greenwich Street); Chinatown (East Broadway and Madison Street); the Lower East Side (Avenues B, C and D); Tribeca (Canal Street, West Street and Greenwich Street); and the West Village (West Street and Washington Street).
All of these initiatives for Chelsea and other parts of southern Manhattan will have to compete for funding and engineering resources that must be deployed citywide.
For instance, Mayor Bloomberg said that beaches are being restored on Staten Island, and that protective barriers are being built. At Breezy Point and in the Rockaways, dunes have been proposed. The restoration of natural wetlands will lessen waves on the South Shore of Staten Island and throughout Jamaica Bay.
Massive storm surge barriers have been suggested by some marine scientists to protect New York City. Bloomberg said, “Even though a giant barrier across our entire harbor is not practical or affordable, smaller surge barriers are feasible, and they could have prevented a lot of the flooding we saw during Sandy.”
He said that one such barrier could be at Newtown Creek to protect Greenpoint and Long Island City, and another could be at Coney Island Creek. He also proposed a surge barrier at the mouth of Jamaica Bay. He admitted that such a barrier would be “very complicated” and take years to build, requiring “real study so we can determine if it’s worthwhile,” but that “analysis can begin today.”
The Army Corps of Engineers will be enlisted to do much of this work.
One of the most ambitious plans Bloomberg put forward was for something he called “Seaport City” that could be built along the East River between the Brooklyn Bridge and the Battery Maritime terminal. He described it as a wall of levees built into the East River, on top of which apartment buildings and office space could be erected, helping to offset the construction costs. This would be a blue-sky proposition, requiring much study and a realistic financing plan.
“This is a long-term proposal,” said Seth Pinsky, president of the New York City Economic Development Corporation, and the head of the team that developed the report on the city’s response to climate change.
“It would require significant input from the community,” he said. “The goal is to create new development opportunities and to do it in a way like with Battery Park City where we can not only pay for it, but protect the land behind.” He said that none of this building would impact the old structures in the Seaport. “It would be built on new land in the East River,” he said. “It would be fully compatible with all the plans that are currently out there for the Seaport.”
Without including what this might cost, Bloomberg pegged the cost of what the city was proposing at $19.5 billion.
“Approximately $10 billion of that is covered by a combination of City capital funding that’s already been allocated and federal relief and other moneys already designated for the City,” he said. “Another $5 billion should come from the federal government in subsequent rounds of Sandy relief that has been appropriated by Congress, as well as through FEMA risk mitigation funding and other sources.”
He added, “We’ll press the federal government to cover as much of the remaining costs as possible.”
As of June 11, when he introduced his plan to protect New York City, Bloomberg had 203 days left in his term as mayor. Clearly, the climate-change protection work will only have just begun by the time he leaves office. But, he said, the work is urgent “and it must begin now. So we will use every one of the next 203 days to get as much work as possible under way and to lock in commitments wherever we can.”
