New York builds a wall to protect itself from floods

Hurricanes like Sandy, in 2012, or Storm Ida last September exposed the threat of climate change to New York. Now, Manhattan is building nearly four kilometers of walls, gates and raised parks to protect itself from flooding and rising sea levels.

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Nearly a decade after Sandy and multiple studies, the city implements East Coast Resilience (ESCR) between 25th and Montgomery streets in Lower Manhattan, a $ 1.45 billion project.

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Drilling machines and excavators prepare the ground for the workers who place the steel and reinforced concrete structure of the wall, which is three meters high.

“When we complete this project we will have a 5 meter high elevation to protect the community,” Tom Foley, acting curator of the New York City Department of Design and Construction, told AFP.

Along 4 kms of the coastline, gates will also be installed to close the passage to the water, and an elevated park that will act as a protective wall to prevent a repeat of the catastrophic effects of Sandy, which left 44 dead, 19,000 million dollars in damages and 110,000 residents affected in the area.

The wall between 23rd and 20th streets has already been built, a part of the project where the separation between the East River and the residential buildings is the narrowest in the entire area.

In addition to the elevated park, the project includes a pier, an esplanade, bike lanes, benches and garden areas.

Likewise, almost 1,800 trees of various species will be planted, almost double the number that have been destroyed to carry out the project, as well as another 1,000 in the neighborhood, in addition to the 500 already planted, explains to AFP Sarah Nielsen, of the New York City Parks Department.

It is completed by an underground drainage system to improve the evacuation capacity of the sewage network and the construction of a power substation to prevent the area from being without electricity for days as happened with Sandy, one of the worst hurricanes that together with Katrina in New Orleans in 2005 or the Harvey that devastated Houston in 2017, have hit cities in the United States so far this century.

– “Better than nothing” –

With 836 kilometers of coastline and a forecast of 0.67 meter rise in sea level by 2050, New York is preparing with a “tiered strategy,” says Jainey Bavishi, director of the Mayor’s Office of Climate Resilience.

“We are building a coastal protection to remove water where possible, but we also recognize that it will not be possible to remove it everywhere,” he warns.

Above all, “we make sure that the foundations are solid enough so that we can continue to build on it if necessary.”

About a million buildings in Manhattan and crucial infrastructure are also being reinforced, limiting construction in risk areas and even working with small businesses and residents to minimize the impact of extreme events, he explains.

It is a problem of global dimensions. More than 150 million people in the world live in areas that could be flooded by water by 2050.

If the numerous appeals before the courts of associations and citizens dissatisfied with the municipality’s project do not delay it, the ESCR will be completed by 2026.

“I’m not sure how effective it is,” says a neighbor who identified herself only as Terry, unhappy that nothing has been done since Sandy, but assumes “it’s better than nothing.”

– “Ambitious strategy” –

The ESCR is just one part of an ambitious project. In 2013, the New York City Council announced a nearly $ 20 billion plan to build “climate resilience.”

Although the amount may seem astronomical, these “20,000 million in investments are just an advance,” warns Bavishi.

“Resilience is a process and not a result,” he says.

Each commune has its specificities and the solutions “depend on the specific conditions of the places, the geography and the topography and the uses made of the coastline.”

The US Congress has just approved a gigantic investment plan of 1.2 trillion dollars of which it will allocate 50,000 million to protect communities from climate change.

“I am convinced that our climate resilience strategy is one of the most ambitious in the United States and possibly in the world,” she says.

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Deshawn