One wonders if the money would be better spent on reducing the cause of the
problem - CO2 emissions, or are we too late for that? And what is the CO2
footprint and environmental impact of building a seawall? Interesting how more
costly climate change survival trumps less costly climate change avoidance.
Good luck with that.
Greg
CITIES:
'Big U' plan to protect Manhattan from storm surges begins with a sea wall
Colin Sullivan, EE reporterPublished: Tuesday, June 10, 2014
NEW YORK -- The $335 million in federal funds delivered last week for a sea
wall on the Lower East Side of Manhattan is the first part of a much larger
design vision for protecting the vibrant heart of the city, and its subways,
against the threat of future storm surges.
The broader project is called the Big U for the Danish architecture firm that
designed it -- Bjarke Ingels Group, or BIG -- and the ultimate shape the lower
Manhattan defense system would take, wrapping a continuous 10-mile U shape from
57th Street on the West Side all the way south around the Battery to 42nd
Street on the Lower East Side.
The first phase was selected to protect the Lower East Side and the East
Village because that part of the city was slammed during Superstorm Sandy and
is still considered highly vulnerable to storm surges. It was this section of
the city that saw a major Consolidated Edison substation catch fire, leading to
a dayslong blackout, and floodwaters so high they leaked from the East River
all the way past First Avenue.
A well-placed source in the mayor's office said this part of the larger project
was selected for phase one because of high population density, including many
lower-income residents in public housing, and the presence of key electrical
infrastructure. The availability of federal Sandy-related dollars for a public
works effort that would not likely attract private capital was also a crucial
reason for the selection, said Henk Ovink, a special adviser to U.S. Housing
and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan.
You have a lot of people at risk and at the same time no market interest,
said Ovink, the Dutch water management expert brought in by Donovan after Sandy
to help rebuild and protect the city.
Where Superstorm Sandy's storm surge once rolled into lower Manhattan, planners
have designed the Bridging Berm to stop an encore. Graphic by Rebuild By
Design.
The sea wall and the $335 million it attracted are also a down payment on
Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio's $3.7 billion overall plan for shoring up the
city and improving defenses against big storms that was started by former Mayor
Michael Bloomberg's (I) ambitious resiliency plan. The $335 million will fund a
10-to-20-foot-tall berm and bridges over the Franklin D. Roosevelt East River
Drive so New Yorkers can access the East River waterfront along a stretch that
was a key inlet during the Sandy storm surge.
The project was hatched as a way to combine climate adaptation with improving
recreational opportunities in the city, combining hard and soft infrastructure
in a nature-as-buffer approach that has been refined in countries like Denmark
and the Netherlands for decades. Also, the FDR Drive has long been considered
an urban eyesore and a barrier by some who would like to see more waterfront
activity here.
Building a defense by chunks
Ovink is the brains behind the Big U vision, which won the right to proceed
through a federal program called Rebuild by Design he is managing for
Donovan. The strategy, for now, appears to be using the federal money available
first before trying to attract development dollars for ideas like Seaport City
or high-priced condo concepts that could help bankroll projects along the
Battery and up the West Side.
Ovink says the Big U idea, selected out of 148 designs, is fundamentally about
coming up with a major infrastructure concept that becomes a community-driven
solution through the design and engineering analysis of what protections would
work best for the Big Apple. Ovink cites Rotterdam, Netherlands, as a city that
has approached the problem of water as an opportunity, and he wants to bring
the same emphasis to New York, moving the overall U forward in chunks or
compartments.
It's like the hull of a ship, he said. If you take out one piece, the ship
still sails.
Of the East Side wall, he added, It doesn't stand on its own but it can stand
by itself. It's also meant to inspire the next phase.
The New York approach, which may be used as a template for other coastal cities
facing storm surge problems, will move forward in three compartments, assuming
each phase finds the money to go forward. After the Lower East Side wall might
come the stretch between the Manhattan Bridge and Montgomery Street, with
deployable walls that would be attached to the underside of the FDR Drive and
ready to flip down to prepare for flood events.
[+] Stretching from West 57th Street south to the Battery, where
