STOPPING
FUTURE STORM SURGES
THE EAST RIVER COASTAL
RESILIENCY PLAN:
FOLLOWING THE MONEY
By Paul DeRienzo
An October Surprise threw years of
planning and public input under the bus, or in the
river, as the city of New York announced last year
its preferred plan for flood control in 58-acre East
River Park, used by thousands, including many among
the city's most vulnerable people. In this article,
I follow the money to investigate the possibility of
behind-the-scenes collusion between government
agencies and one of the world's biggest construction
companies.
Superstorm Sandy drove the sea over
barriers and deep into New York City neighborhoods
in October of 2012. This led then-Mayor Michael
Bloomberg to establish a private-public partnership
to brainstorm a collaborative approach to prepare
coastal regions of New York City for rising seas and
storm surges.
Beginning in 2014, many stakeholders took
part in a productive series of meetings and working
groups that led to a project called the BIG U. This
would have linked together plans tailored to each
locality with extensive public input. The Lower East
Side part of the BIG U would cost about $350
million, raised by community and local groups from
federal and other sources.
By the spring of 2018, as plans were
coming together for eventual construction — the city
went silent. Environmentalists and citizen groups
found themselves ghosted and incapable of getting a
response.
Then, in October 2018, there appeared a
fait accompli: a new plan that would affect a two
mile swath of coastline along Manhattan’s Lower East
Side, which the city admitted was very different
from the BIG U proposal. Under the new plan, the
city will now spend $1.5 billion of capital money to
raise East River Park by more than nine feet over 3½
years. During that time, the park would be one
hundred percent closed. Thousands of residents who
use ball parks, tracks, soccer fields and other
recreational facilities in the park would be out of
luck.
A report by the Center for an Urban Future
called “Slow Build” tells how NYC has failed to
build almost one-third of capital projects within
years of original projections, costing taxpayers
billions in extra construction expenses. The concern
is that East River Park would be unavailable for
much longer than the projected 3 - 4 years. An
example is a just-completed $100 million improvement
that closed the East River Park’s riverside walkway
for nearly a decade. Under the city’s new preferred
plan, those newly-completed improvements would be
demolished.
As a member of Community Board Three, I
have attended many public hearings on the city’s
plan and have seen resistance everywhere. After the
breathtaking shift by the City’s Department of
Design and Construction [DDC] why wouldn’t the
public have doubts about the city’s long term
commitments?
The original community plan, which was
part of the BIG U process, envisioned the park as a
wetland that would absorb the rising sea while using
the adjacent FDR Drive as a backstop for a flood
wall. This is an approach being successfully
implemented around the world. The city’s project
calls for dumping tons of imported landfill and
dirt, raising dust clouds and polluting the air in a
neighborhood with some of the highest asthma rates
in the country.
The danger of climate change is real.
Independent experts say the city may be
underestimating the effects of sea level rise and
storm surges. On the side of the city’s plan to
raise East River Park, unbiased experts say that
only a massive rebuilding can work and that
community-based plans like the BIG U are not
realistic solutions to the scale of the expected
inundation.
Yet, a significant core of
politically-active Lower East Side residents say the
city’s lack of transparency is masking information
that residents need to know. Many are
environmentalists. Groups in the neighborhood, long
known for its activism, have been calling for
independent experts to look into the flood control
plans that morphed overnight from a
community-approved coastal resiliency plan.
On September 21, a diverse coalition of
community members and concerned citizens rallied in
Tompkins Square Park and marched to East River Park.
Along the way, they stopped at the office of city
council member Carlina Rivera, where they chanted
“BURY THE PLAN, NOT THE PARK.” pleading with her to
use her power in the city council to block the plan.
While City Hall has been intimidating the
community with predictions of major storm surges and
the need for immediate flood control measures, the
city has failed to tell residents that they are
already protected under other coastal resiliency
programs.
The project Draft Environmental Impact
Statement [DEIS] has reportedly revealed that,
contrary to the city’s projected image of
“starry-eyed environmentalists” endangering
residents with unworkable plans, the city has known
all along that public housing and schools are
already being protected independently of the city’s
plan, with money from the federal Department of
Housing and Urban Development [HUD] and Federal
Emergency Management Agency [FEMA].
Buried in the DEIS, in a section titled
“Environmental Effects No Action Alternative
(Alternative 1)”, the city admits that doing nothing
would not adversely affect public housing projects
along the East River.
As per the DEIS: “Collectively, these
planned projects to enhance open space resources,
provide targeted neighborhood resiliency measures,
and improve access to parkland and other parts of
the city are consistent with the current
neighborhood uses, and are not expected to create
any substantial change in neighborhood character.
However, the neighborhoods within the study area
would continue to be susceptible to coastal flooding
during storm events, and the potential for adverse
socioeconomic effects within these neighborhoods due
to a storm surge would remain.”
In other words, the city admits that
public housing is being protected by yet another
plan, called Recovery and Resliency, funded by $2.9
billion “set aside for NYCHA [the New York City
Housing Authority] to strengthen buildings against
future storms.” But, the city claims that its
preferred plan is still necessary to mitigate
“potential adverse socioeconomic effects.” What are
these effects?
What’s going on here?
JACOBS ENGINEERING GROUP is among the top
20 companies receiving federal contracts, rocketing
up the list after last year’s acquisition of CH2M
HILL, another large construction company. These are
among the main contractors for the city’s preferred
plan. They are also spearheading a much more
ambitious project: the construction of a system of
barriers to be built by the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers.
The Corps is considering several options
for coastal storm protections, specifically, storm
surge barriers – giant ocean gates. Some proposals
are for gates up to five miles long, blocking the
harbor and the Hudson River and Long Island Sound.
Markedly, the Corps’ various proposals would not
prevent sea level rise, but the gates would be
closed during major storms to prevent surges of
water into the city, potentially damaging its
underground transportation and communication
networks. CH2M HILL has provided preliminary
renderings of these Army Corps of Engineers
proposals.
These questions remain unanswered:
• Why are they suddenly so necessary and
what is the involvement of the De Blasio
administration and the city's Department of Design
and Construction with its track record of going far
over budget?
• Are these contracts being opened for
bidding?
• Are certain contractors grandfathered in?
• What unions represent the workers?
• What’s the labor history of these
companies?
• Who is responsible for liability in case
these projects fail to stop a storm surge?
• Why now?
• Why the epic lack of transparency?
The only way to discover the truth is to
follow the money.
Global warming is REAL.
That's why millions are marching worldwide,
especially youth demanding that action be taken.
New York City’s preferred plan is to raise the
East River Park by more than nine feet, with
construction starting in spring 2020 and lasting a
minimum of 3½ years. Most of the community doesn't
want that. Some folks in the NYCHA projects do
because they're directly in the line of fire.
Environmentalists point out there is no
intermediate plan to protect NYCHA projects during
the planned construction and that the community
was kept in the dark regarding separate plans to
protect the projects. Also, there is no guaranty
that ANY plan will work in the end. The city’s
plan is a slap-dash project to get the problem out
of the way until another generation has to deal
with it. By 2050, the projections used for the
iteration of this flood control project will be
obsolete. The seas keep rising beyond predictions.
Some say that only a massive flood prevention
project will work. The city is going about it the
wrong way and now they face determined opposition.
MOTHER NATURE is coming and boy is
she pissed!
– Paul DeRienzo
[Paul DeRienzo is a member of Community
Board Three, which covers the Lower East Side and
Chinatown. He is also news director for WBAI (99.5FM
and wbai.org). He also hosts public access show Let
Them Talk on Manhattan Neighborhood Network
(mnn.org)]
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