A decade after the disaster that woke New York to the severity of the climate crisis, new works are starting to test local tolerance for flood protection measures.
Hurricane Sandy, in October 2012, is a milestone, the violent warning for a future that is already knocking at the door. The storm killed 43 people in the city, caused damages of US$ 32 billion, flooded almost half a million homes and made it clear that the greater frequency of these events, added to the rise in sea level, makes it impossible to occupy 858 kilometers of coast without prevention works.
In the vulnerable south of Manhattan Island, a park will be demolished to be raised three meters above its current level. Wagner Park is on a stretch of Battery Park City, just off Wall Street, which has skyscrapers built on an embankment overlooking the Statue of Liberty. The work is part of several plans coordinated by the city and the state and will include the construction of barriers around Battery Park.
As always, in metropolises it is impossible to propose, approve and obtain public support for works without navigating a tangle of conflicting interests. The elevation of Wagner Park, scheduled to begin in July, is already strongly opposed by the Battery Alliance association, which brings together 16,000 residents of 18 condominiums.
THE Sheet the group’s president, Daniel Akkerman, acknowledged the need for works to contain the waters, but criticized the state agency that manages Battery Park, which he accuses of ignoring the community’s arguments. In addition to the work ending up with a sports area for two years, the expected time for the process to be completed, Wagner Park was not flooded by Hurricane Sandy, it is not situated on an exposed level like the rest of the area and “even the former mayor [Michael] Bloomberg agrees with us,” says Akkerman, citing the billionaire and city’s first chief to make the environment a priority agenda.
He suggests that the work serves commercial interests to create tourist attractions, such as restaurants, while those who live in the 18 condominiums already pay extra taxes to maintain the green area.
Americans use the phrase “not in my backyard” (NIMBY) to refer to residents’ automatic aversion to change. The reaction makes, for example, wealthy New Yorkers revolt every time the city tries to open new shelters for homeless people.
Thus, the dispute brewing on the peninsula that is home to the largest stretch of beaches accessible by public transport to New Yorkers will test the strength of environmental arguments against the interests of backyards. The works of the Rockaway coast, immortalized in the song “Rockaway Beach” by the Ramones, and inhabited by an ethnic mosaic of 130,000 residents, have forced the closure of beaches and angered residents and small businesses who need the three months of summer to close their doors. bills.
A demonstration was called in May, and John Cori, founder of Friends of Rockaway, explains that the problem is the lack of assistance to merchants and other solutions to mitigate the change in routine. But the main focus of the municipal committee representing local interests is to block the construction of 12,000 apartments in the area, which has vast swaths of land owned by the city.
At a meeting of the group this week, a document was approved to demand environmental requirements from the mayor and the City Council. Cori says that the political argument today involves preservation and cites the absence of exit routes in a storm, the numerous works promised but not carried out since Hurricane Sandy and the lack of environmental impact studies.
It is difficult today to find anyone who defends sitting back in the face of a succession of extreme weather events, such as Hurricane Ida last September, which drowned 45 people inside their homes and cars and turned subway tunnels into raging riverbeds. But in a dense and unequal metropolis like New York, the banner of environmental justice adds complexity to the chain of public decisions.
The city is in the final stretch of the debate on the Climate and Community Protection Leadership Act, passed last year, which guarantees the allocation of resources to reduce air pollution, increase green areas in lower-income neighborhoods and find solutions to home.
“New Yorkers face climate change unevenly,” he tells Sheet Paul Galley, a professor at Columbia University and leader of the Coastal Communities Resilience Project. “If you live in low-lying housing projects, you are exposed to greater impact because they often suffer from poor maintenance and have less access to emergency services in major storms.”
​New York, says Galley, is a manual of complexity, given the diversity of the coast and the concentration of 8 million inhabitants. The old infrastructure, he adds, makes any work to reinvent the coast a huge challenge. The professor criticizes the city government’s decision to stop listening to suggestions from architects and community groups about protected areas in lower Manhattan.
The adopted plan disregards, for example, the idea, inspired by a Dutch experience, of carrying out works that allow periodic flooding of green areas, without catastrophic effect on housing.
“If the government doesn’t work with residents or use accumulated local knowledge, it sets the stage for conflict,” says Galley. About Mayor Eric Adams, not exactly a green paladin, who took office in January and is under intense pressure to ease the rise in violent crime, the academic sounds diplomatic. He says he hopes he will make environmental protection a priority.
