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Tuesday, February 6th, 2024

After a Decade of Planning, New York City Is Raising Its Shoreline

Author:     ANDREW S. LEWIS
Source:     Yale Environment 360
Publication Date:     DECEMBER 19, 2023
 Link: After a Decade of Planning, New York City Is Raising Its Shoreline
Stephan:  

Here is some good news, an early report on a critically important emerging coastal trend. American coastal cities are beginning to learn something the Dutch have long recognized and practiced. What is now called “living with water.” The sea is rising, and it is too late to do much about that. But while many politicians babbled on about climate denial and such nonsense, the Dutch took it seriously and began to build the seawall systems necessary to protect themselves. Now New York City, Norfolk, Virginia and, as this article describes, some other cities and coastal regions — but not all — are literally learning from the Dutch and beginning to do what is necessary for their survival. Not a moment too soon.

Workers complete a floodwall at Stuyvesant Cove Park in 2021 as part of the East Side Coastal Resiliency project. 
Credit: NYC Department of Design and Construction

On a recent morning in Asser Levy Playground, on Manhattan’s East Side, a group of retirees traded serves on a handball court adjacent to a recently completed 10-foot-high floodwall. Had a sudden storm caused the East River to start overtopping this barrier, a 79-foot-long floodgate would have begun gliding along a track, closing off the playground and keeping the handball players dry. In its small way, this 2.4-acre waterfront park is a major proof of concept for a city at the forefront of flood resilience planning — a city working toward living with, and not against, water.

The Asser Levy renovation, completed in 2022, is part of East Side Coastal Resiliency (ESCR), the largest urban resiliency project currently underway in the United States. Over the next three years, at a total cost of $1.8 billion, ESCR will reshape two-and-a-half miles of Lower Manhattan’s shoreline. But ESCR is just one link in […]

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