![]() Jones III, the planning chief for the Corps’s New York district.īut there is another potential sticking point, according to Kimberly Ong, a senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an influential environmental group. “If there’s an economically viable and ecologically sound solution that can reduce risks to New York and New Jersey, we should put that forward,” said Clifford S. Three involve different combinations of smaller sea walls at the mouths of various New York City waterways, and a final option includes shore-based measures only. Beside the outer harbor wall, there are four less massive proposals. The Corps says that its designs can be modified for higher seas, and emphasizes that it is not wedded to any of the five options it is studying. Even if construction went smoothly, opponents say, the barrier could be obsolete within decades because, they say, the Corps’s estimates of future sea levels are too low. The Corps estimates the wall to cost $119 billion, and it is unclear if the city, New York State, New Jersey and Congress will agree to jointly fund the project, which would take 25 years to build. They would not counter two other climate-related threats - flooding from high tides and storm runoff - and they could trap sewage and toxins, which would threaten the nascent ecological revival of New York’s waterways. The Corps’s barrier designs aim to address only storm surges. They also say that the use of locally tailored, onshore solutions alone, like berms, wetlands restoration and raised parks, would likely benefit wealthy areas first, not the low-income communities that suffered disproportionately from Sandy in 2012.īut despite its boldness, a barrier like this has alarmed many resilience planning and environmental experts, who say it is an oversimplified, myopic concept that does not attempt to address several major climate threats and could even make things worse. McVay Hughes are attracted to the prospect of an enormous barrier that would protect much of the region. “Do we want a 20- or 30-foot-wall between Battery Park and the river?” she asked.Īdvocates like Ms. Those who support a barrier miles from Manhattan’s coast - one in the outer New York Harbor, out of sight from many residents and tourists - say it would be the best solution for protecting the most people, properties and landmarks, including the Statue of Liberty, from a storm surge swelling the East and Hudson Rivers, without cutting off the city from its waterfront.Ĭatherine McVay Hughes, who led the community board in Lower Manhattan during Hurricane Sandy, supports the outer harbor barrier because, she said, protection measures built solely on the coastlines, yet high enough to ward off the biggest floods, would be unsightly. The proposals have sparked fierce debate as New York, like other coastal cities, grapples with the broader question of how and to what degree it must transform its landscape and lifestyle to survive rising seas. The giant barrier is the largest of five options the Army Corps of Engineers is studying to protect the New York area as storms become more frequent, and destructive, on a warming Earth. ![]() A six-mile-long wall blocks the deluge, saving property and lives. ![]() But this time, man-made islands with retractable gates stretch from the Rockaways in Queens to a strip of land in New Jersey south of Staten Island. Picture a storm charging toward New York City, pushing a surge of seawater like the one that flooded the region during Hurricane Sandy.
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