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Opinion|The Plan to Save New York From the Next Sandy Will Ruin the Waterfront.
It Doesn’t Have To.

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Opinion


THE PLAN TO SAVE NEW YORK FROM THE NEXT SANDY WILL RUIN THE WATERFRONT. IT
DOESN’T HAVE TO.

June 15, 2023
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By Robert Yaro and Daniel Gutman


Graphics by Quoctrung Bui and Taylor Maggiacomo

Photographs by John Lehr for The New York Times

Mr. Yaro is a former president of the Regional Plan Association and a board
member of Metro Flood Defense. Mr. Gutman is an environmental planning
consultant and a member of the New York-New Jersey Storm Surge Working Group.

Last September, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers unveiled its proposal to
protect the greater New York and New Jersey metro area from the next
catastrophic flood. It is an epic plan that includes dozens of miles of
floodwalls, levees and berms along the shoreline and 12 storm surge barriers —
arrays of movable gates — across entrances to waterways throughout the region.

The plan is estimated to cost a staggering $52.6 billion. It’s by far the most
expensive project ever proposed by the Corps.

The trouble is that despite its great ambitions, the Corps’s plan demonstrates
the shortcomings of relying on massive shoreline structures for flood
protection. If built, this plan could reverse the region’s decades-long effort
to open up its waterfront for recreation while, at best, protecting only a small
fraction of the region’s most vulnerable areas from devastating storm surge
flooding.

Coastal storm flooding is a grave risk to the region, as we saw when Hurricane
Sandy swept through, causing 60 deaths and more than $70 billion in damage. In
terms of population at risk, New York City is the most vulnerable city in the
country, according to Climate Central, a nonprofit research organization. As
global warming raises sea levels, more of the region will be at risk, and the
likelihood of Sandy-scale flooding will increase.

Other cities facing such risks — including Rotterdam, the Netherlands; London;
and St. Petersburg, Russia — have built arrays of movable gates across the main
entrances to their harbors. These highly effective and reliable harborwide surge
barriers can protect large areas while leaving shorelines free for recreation
and other uses. And they are an ideal fit for the geography of New York Harbor.

Central to the Corps’s proposal, by contrast, are 50 miles of 12-to-20-foot-high
floodwalls, levees and other shoreline structures that would interfere with
public access and connection to the water on long stretches of existing
developed waterfronts and parks, including Hunters Point, Greenpoint,
Manhattan’s west side and downtown Jersey City.

These visualizations illustrate how floodwalls proposed by the Corps could alter
the region’s waterfront. The Corps has suggested that the positions for some
walls could shift as the project moves forward but hasn’t yet indicated what
those changes would be.


HUDSON RIVER PARK

12 feet

12 feet




HUDSON RIVER PARK

12 feet

12 feet




HUDSON RIVER PARK

12 feet

12 feet




GANTRY PLAZA STATE PARK

12 feet

12 feet




GANTRY PLAZA STATE PARK

12 feet

12 feet



Imagine bicycling up the Hudson River Greenway in Manhattan next to a concrete
wall between you and Hudson River Park. Or straining to see the United Nations
through occasional gaps in a 12-foot-high floodwall at Hunters Point. Or
strolling along Jersey City’s pleasant waterfront esplanade without cool breezes
from the harbor.

To preserve a modicum of public access, the floodwalls and levees would have
numerous pedestrian and vehicular gates, some crossing major highways, cutting
off even emergency traffic for many hours during a storm. The gates would have
to be individually closed whenever a major storm threatens, requiring an
extraordinary level of coordination. Failure to successfully deploy one gate
could lead to large-scale flooding.

Floodwalls will also require expensive modifications to New York City’s drainage
system and costly pump stations to prevent neighborhoods behind the walls from
being flooded by rainwater, according to a letter Rohit Aggarwala, New York
City’s chief climate officer, sent to the Corps.

These and other deficiencies are so serious that New York City seemed to have
second thoughts. Mr. Aggarwala warned, “The city will not accept austere
floodwalls running through our neighborhoods.”


GREENPOINT PUBLIC PARK

20 feet

20 feet




GREENPOINT PUBLIC PARK

20 feet

20 feet




RED HOOK

20 feet

20 feet




RED HOOK

12 feet

12 feet



Despite its high cost, the Corps’s proposal would still leave about 40 percent
of vulnerable areas at risk of coastal flooding. This is mainly due to a
cost-benefit methodology that appears to be biased against protecting low-income
or smaller communities with lower property values. Defending areas such as the
South Bronx, Hallets Point, Queensbridge, parts of South Williamsburg and even
Yonkers and Ossining from storm surge is apparently not worth the cost — a clear
example of climate redlining. The Corps’s plan also wouldn’t protect many vital
regional assets, including the Hunts Point Market, LaGuardia Airport and
Governors Island.

Furthermore, many environmental groups are concerned that putting surge barriers
across narrow waterways with very poor tidal flushing — some of them highly
polluted, like Newtown Creek and the Gowanus Canal — will only exacerbate
already unacceptable conditions.

Why would the Corps propose a plan with such glaring weaknesses? And why would
New York State, New Jersey and New York City endorse it?

One reason may be that the Corps and its local partners have been inanely
deferring to one another instead of seeking the best plan. The project is a
partnership among state and federal agencies, in which the states would pay 35
percent of the costs and the federal government would pay the rest.

The city and states need the Corps’s promise of federal money to fund any major
coastal protection project, which probably explains their readiness to accept
the Corps’s proposal. Yet the Corps can’t get construction funds without
congressional approval for a specific plan, which requires local political
support and advocacy. So the Corps may be proposing what it believes the city
and two states want.

The Corps’s design for shoreline floodwalls and local surge gates is strikingly
similar to the plan that New York City released in 2013 after Hurricane Sandy.
The Corps then extended the strategy to New Jersey communities. This seemingly
mutual deference has resulted in the destructive and inadequate plan now under
consideration — a proposal that would hobble the region for decades. It portends
an endless series of fights and litigation, community by community, over
shoreline floodwalls and local surge gates.

Fortunately, when the Corps unveiled its preferred plan, it was accompanied by
several alternatives.

One option would be to use a regional storm surge barrier system instead of
shoreline floodwalls and local sea gates. A Dutch flood risk expert, Jeroen
Aerts, the head of the department of water and climate risk at Vrije University
Amsterdam, whom New York City hired to evaluate its plans against other
alternatives, concluded in 2013 that a regional offshore barrier system is a
better choice. “Don’t rule out yet the barriers,” he warned, referring to
harborwide storm surge barriers, “because the sea level is going to rise very
quickly, and then you need a barrier.”

A regional, harborwide barrier system could stop the largest storm surges while
maintaining normal water levels in the harbor. And instead of manually operating
numerous shoreline gates, the closure of offshore surge gates would be
mechanized and centrally controlled. All communities within the harbor area
would be protected equally.

The Corps examined two ways to protect the region using harborwide barriers. One
plan, featuring a storm surge barrier stretching from Breezy Point to Sandy Hook
at the entrance to the lower bay, would cover 96 percent of the region at risk
of flooding. In the other plan, a storm surge barrier would likely extend from
Brooklyn to Staten Island, with supplemental gates at Arthur Kill and Jamaica
Bay and would cover more than 80 percent. Both alternatives would have a surge
barrier across the harbor entrance at Throgs Neck.

No plan

The Bronx

Manhattan

Jersey

City

Queens

Brooklyn

Jamaica Bay

Staten

Island

Atlantic

Ocean

Areas predicted to flood

4 miles

No plan

The Bronx

Manhattan

Jersey

City

Queens

Brooklyn

Jamaica Bay

Staten

Island

Atlantic

Ocean

Areas predicted to flood

4 miles

Plan 3b

$53 billion

63% protected

The Bronx

Manhattan

Jersey

City

Queens

Brooklyn

Jamaica Bay

Staten

Island

Atlantic

Ocean

Areas predicted to flood

4 miles

Plan 3b

$53 billion

63% protected

The Bronx

Manhattan

Jersey

City

Queens

Brooklyn

Jamaica Bay

Staten

Island

Atlantic

Ocean

Areas predicted to flood

4 miles

Plan 3a

$77 billion

87% protected

The Bronx

Manhattan

Jersey

City

Queens

Brooklyn

Jamaica Bay

Staten

Island

Atlantic

Ocean

Areas predicted to flood

4 miles

Plan 3a

$77 billion

87% protected

The Bronx

Manhattan

Jersey

City

Queens

Brooklyn

Jamaica Bay

Staten

Island

Atlantic

Ocean

Areas predicted to flood

4 miles

Plan 2

$112 billion

96% protected

The Bronx

Manhattan

Jersey

City

Queens

Brooklyn

Jamaica Bay

Staten

Island

Breezy Point

Atlantic

Ocean

Sandy Hook

4 miles

Plan 2

$112 billion

96% protected

The Bronx

Manhattan

Jersey

City

Queens

Brooklyn

Jamaica Bay

Staten

Island

Breezy

Point

Atlantic

Ocean

Sandy

Hook

4 miles

Source: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

The Corps’s flood prediction for the next 100-year storm if nothing is built.

This is the Corps’s preferred plan.
It consists of walls, small storm surge barriers and other shoreline barriers.

One alternative would include a storm surge barrier between Brooklyn and Staten
Island, protecting more neighborhoods and reducing the number of walls along the
waterfront.

The most expensive and comprehensive alternative would feature a six-mile storm
surge barrier between Breezy Point and Sandy Hook.

Source: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

One challenge of regional barrier systems is what to do about sea level rise.
Using the surge barriers to stop increasingly frequent high tide flooding may be
tempting. But by carelessly disrupting tidal flow, frequent gate closings might
risk the health of the Hudson River estuary. So a plan featuring harborwide
surge barriers must include a plan to raise streets and walkways near the shore,
where necessary, to block flooding by high tides and smaller storms. The
offshore barriers would then be used only for medium-size and large storms,
closing for storms no more than about once every two years, on average, as the
Corps promises.

The city resisted harborwide barriers in 2013 because of too many unanswered
questions. Many of those questions have now been answered.

A major concern was whether the federal government would fund such a large
project, then estimated at $20 billion to $25 billion. But recently, the Texas
delegation obtained congressional funding for a $34 billion Corps coastal
restoration and surge barrier project for Galveston Bay to protect Houston and
the surrounding area. Perhaps that approval can provide confidence that our
region’s powerful congressional delegation can do the same.

Another question is whether piers supporting the gates would affect tidal flow,
salinity and sediment transport. New research from David Ralston, a scientist at
the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, suggests that when the surge gates are
open, the environmental effects would be modest.

To impede storm surges, some environmental groups suggest turning to
nature-based solutions, such as coastal wetlands, dunes, barrier islands and
oyster reefs. We agree that, wherever practical, nature-based systems, like the
reinforced dune being built on the Rockaway Peninsula, should be the first
choice. But to combat a large storm surge, like the nine feet of water pushed up
by Hurricane Sandy, other nature-based solutions would require vastly more space
than is available in New York Harbor. For example, about three miles of wetlands
between the ocean and shore would reduce a storm surge by only about 1 foot,
according to a widely cited study conducted by the Corps.

After a public comment period that ended in March, the Corps will decide in the
next few weeks whether to continue with its current proposal or switch to a
different alternative. The Corps, the states and New York City, perhaps with the
encouragement of our congressional delegation, should set aside their flawed
proposal and turn to something better.

Galveston-Houston and Miami-Dade, facing similar challenges, were able to make
extensive changes to the Corps’s initial plans. Galveston-Houston added a large
storm surge barrier to a Corps plan for coastal restoration. Miami-Dade rejected
the Corps’s initial flood mitigation plan and, as a result, is now engaged with
the Corps in devising a much improved design.

For the sake of our waterfront and the communities excluded by the current plan,
we should insist that the same thing happen here.



Wall renderings are based on plans released by the Army Corps of Engineers in
September 2022.


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