NEW YORK | New York Ocean Barrier

[fimiak]

I wonder if building the ocean wall could be made to help slow the flow of water in the East River?

[Eidolon]

Political support for a sea wall in New York Harbor begins to form

Robert S. Eshelman, E&E reporter
ClimateWire: Thursday, November 15, 2012

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn on Tuesday announced a $20 billion proposal for improving New York City's climate change preparedness. In addition to investing in subway, sewage and electrical grid protection, the plan calls for fast-tracking Aerts' study.

As part of the speaker's proposal, New York Sen. Charles Schumer (D) will lead an effort in the U.S. Congress to tap the Army Corps of Engineers to conduct a study into the feasibility of constructing sea surge barriers around New York City.

Quinn is a front-runner in the 2013 mayor's race, and her proposal offers a hint that disaster response and climate change may be central topics in the contest to succeed Bloomberg.

In announcing the proposal, Quinn pointed out that sea surge barriers have been built along the Dutch coast and in London's portion of the River Thames. She also described how engineers in Stamford, Conn., "with the click of a mouse, brought a storm surge gate rising up from the water as Sandy approached."

The Connecticut barrier was built following a strong hurricane that hit in 1938. "It's now crystal clear that we need to build protective structures," she said.

"This is really a giant step forward," said Robert Trentlyon, a resident of Lower Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood and for many years a leader in a citizen effort to build support for the construction of a sea barrier.

Trentlyon has secured the backing of many Manhattan community boards, the advisory groups appointed by each of New York City's borough presidents, and championed the concept at City Council meetings.

Aerts will travel to New York City in December to present his preliminary findings to city officials and at a gathering of scientists. He said the report will be finished by the summer of 2013.

"In a few months' time, the discussion will be different," warned Aerts. "Now the memory is fresh. In a few months' time, there will be another crisis. The mess has been cleaned up. The people in Breezy Point may have a new home. And suddenly the discussion becomes different."

The environmental lobby and people concerned that storm surge barriers will compromise their view will be the primary opponents, he said.

NIMBYism will stoop to new lows of stupidity and lack of foresight if they try to block or delay something this important for the city, especially if their only concerns are their views from beachfront housing that will be destroyed by the next storm surge.

[aquablue]

Originally Posted by Eidolon

Political support for a sea wall in New York Harbor begins to form

Robert S. Eshelman, E&E reporter
ClimateWire: Thursday, November 15, 2012





NIMBYism will stoop to new lows of stupidity and lack of foresight if they try to block or delay something this important for the city, especially if their only concerns are their views from beachfront housing that will be destroyed by the next storm surge.

Please. Their concern is their house value. How would you like it if you owned a property there and your investment's value could be reduced by 1/3 or more by such measures? Even if the threat of destruction by storm surge reduces the value of the house, cutting the view would probably be far worse. Who wants to buy a coastal house with no sea view but instead a view of a ugly barrier or a dune? I understand their fears and I think that this will be a big fight.

I don't think they should ruin the beaches with massive tall dunes. Beaches are one of NY trumps cards and I think the medicine is worse than the disease. I feel like the best thing would be to build a storm surge gate across the Raritan Bay to protect the most vulnerable areas of the core population. For the beaches, instead of tall dunes or ugly sea walls that would block the view, how about building breakwaters farther out to sea that will not impinge so much on views?


If somebody (i.e, leadership) actually had some balls, here is a novel idea. Given that the airports in NYC are so constrained and congested and will need to be expanded in the future to prevent sure regional economic stagnation or decline, why not build a new island airport/flood barrier hybrid near the mouth of the Raritan bay with movable gates for passing ships. Such an island airport would be built higher than any projected sea level rises and be surrounded by breakwaters or sea-walls, etc. Kill two birds with one stone by closing JFK airport, replacing it with a larger airport with more runways while reducing the threat of flooding to the core population areas. By doing so you also reduce noise and pollution effects for much of the area due to more over-water landings/takeoffs.

Sadly, that would be something that Asia or even Europe would have the balls to do but NYC and Washington pols have neither the will, imagination, innovation, nor foresight to bring something like this to fruition. The US is on the downward slope, the age of the big innovative engineering projects seems to be over, which is a sign of decline and apathy.

[Eidolon]

Originally Posted by aquablue

Please. Their concern is their house value.

Isn't that cause on nearly all the NIMBYism in the world?


Sea wall, other options being considered to protect Hoboken: report
By Charles Hack/The Jersey Journal
on December 24, 2012

Hurricane Sandy pushed floodwaters into the city from Weehawken Cove in the north and from Long Slip Canal in the south flooding more than half the city for days.

One of the ideas would be a sea wall at the Long Slip Canal next to NJ Transit's rail yards that was overwhelmed by Sandy's storm surge, Ron Hine, director of the Fund for a Better Waterfront said.

Another idea is put the city's power substations on platforms after most of the city lost power after Sandy flooded two of three substations; as well as zoning changes to prevent the building of ground-floor apartments in flood zones.

"We have to think outside a box," Zimmer is quoted as saying. "I don't want to be going into hurricane season with my substations exposed."

Protective structures also have been proposed for New York City, but Mayor Michael Bloomberg has rejected projects such as a sea wall as too costly.

New York Planners Prep For A 'New Normal' Of Powerful Storms
Thursday, December 13, 2012
By Christopher Joyce

It will take tens of billions of dollars to repair the damage wrought by Superstorm Sandy. But scientists who study climate change say repair is not enough. As the climate warms, ice sheets and glaciers will melt, raising the sea level. That means coastal storms will more likely cause flooding.

So New Yorkers, local politicians and scientists face a tough decision: How to spend limited funds to defend themselves from what climate experts call "the new normal."

New York City faces the Atlantic Ocean like a chin waiting to be hit, and Sandy stepped up and whacked it. And there will be more storms like Sandy.

"Storms today are different," says Jane Lubchenco, who heads the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which includes the National Weather Service. "Because of sea level rise, the storm surge was much more intense, much higher than it would have been in a non-climate changed world."

Even garden-variety storms may someday heave water up to your doorstep. So the question now is: How to prepare for the next big one?

[aquablue]

Bloomberg says its too costly to build a barrier to protect NYC from future damages that could cost far more than sandy or any barrier. I think this is being incredibly shortsighted and miserly. London built the Thames barrier, but the mayor is willing to risk the piece of mind of city residents and not do the utmost to protect the most expensive property in the USA?

.

[nycaddict]

its all right, bloombergs out of here soon anyway.

[khaizer007]

Yea, at this point, it doesn't really matters what Bloomberg thinks. Plus Christine Quinn ( the leading candidate to succeed him) is very favorable about building one.

[aquablue]

Originally Posted by khaizer007

Yea, at this point, it doesn't really matters what Bloomberg thinks. Plus Christine Quinn ( the leading candidate to succeed him) is very favorable about building one.

Yes, but why would he take such a short sighted stance?

[khaizer007]

Originally Posted by aquablue

Yes, but why would he take such a short sighted stance?

beats me! weird cause i mostly agree with his views.

[Eidolon]

Natural hazards: New York vs the sea
By Jeff Tollefson
13 February 2013

Malcolm Bowman, who heads the storm-surge modelling laboratory at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, has spearheaded the drive for barriers. He imagines a structure roughly 8 kilometres wide and 6 metres high at the entrance to the harbour, and a second barrier where the East River drains into the Long Island Sound. The state panel's cost estimates for such a system range from $7 billion to $29 billion, depending on the design. The harbour barrier could also serve as a bridge for trains and vehicles to the city's airports, suggests Bowman. “My viewpoint is not that we should start pouring concrete next week, but I do think we need to do the studies,” he says. But whether Sandy will push the city to build major defences, Bowman says, “I don't know.”

Disasters have spurred costly action in the past. The 1888 blizzard helped to drive New York to put its elevated commuter trains underground. And in 2012, the US Army Corps of Engineers completed a $1.1-billion surge barrier in New Orleans, Louisiana, as part of a $14.6-billion effort to protect the city after it was battered by hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005. But the New York metropolitan area is bigger and more complex than New Orleans, and protecting it will require a multi-pronged approach. Several hundred thousand city residents live along more than 800 kilometres of coastline, and a barrier would not protect much of coastal Long Island, where Sandy wrought considerable damage. Moreover, the barrier would work only against occasional storm surges. It would not hold back the slowly rising sea or protect against flooding caused by rain.

“A storm-surge barrier may be appropriate, but it's never one thing that is going to protect you,” says Adam Freed, a programme director at the Nature Conservancy in New York, who until late last year was deputy director of the city's office of long-term planning and sustainability. “It's going to be a holistic approach, including a lot of unsexy things like elevating electrical equipment out of the basement and providing more back-up generators.”

[Duck From NY]

So this barrier is going to stretch from Sandy Hook to Rockaway, which was flooded during Sandy. Call me crazy, but I'm skeptical that this would work.

Originally Posted by Eidolon

[ardecila]

Originally Posted by Duck From NY

So this barrier is going to stretch from Sandy Hook to Rockaway, which was flooded during Sandy. Call me crazy, but I'm skeptical that this would work.

No, you'd need a levee running down the Rockaways too.

[Duck From NY]

Originally Posted by ardecila

No, you'd need a levee running down the Rockaways too.

I'm very skeptical. I feel like the geography of the Harbor presents a lot more potential flaws and weaknesses than other urban areas that have flood controls

[NYguy]

http://archpaper.com/news/articles.asp?id=6539

Going Dutch
New draft report suggests ways to protect against rising tides in New York City.





Alex Ulam
March 12, 2013

...a 72-page draft report titled “Cost Estimates for Storm Surge Barriers and Flood Protection in New York City” has just been completed by several academics in Holland, along with Malcolm Bowman, a professor of oceanography at Stony Brook University and a member of the New York City Panel on Climate Change.

The draft surge-barrier report provides detailed estimated costs of three different floodgate scenarios, as well as additional waterproofing measures and levee systems that will be necessary whether or not the city decides that floodgates are actually required. Jeroen Aerts, a professor of environmental studies at the Free University of Amsterdam, and one of the report’s authors, said it will stimulate a more informed discussion.

“Right now in the media, they act like there are only two options,” Aerts said, “but we can start on the ‘no regret measures’ and study the big barriers for later.”

The report lays out three different plans for floodgates. One, called “Environmental Dynamics,” would close off New York City’s waterways at the Arthur Kill, the Verrazano Narrows, and the East River. Based on historical analysis, the plan is projected to cost $7.5 billion to $10.5 billion to build, and $77.5 million in annual maintenance costs. An additional gate, to protect Jamaica Bay, would add $4.1 billion to $6.1 billion to the costs of this option.

A two-gate option, “NY-NJ Connects,” would seal the city’s harbor with one gate across the East River and another running from Breezy Point to Sandy Hook. This plan would cost an estimated $7.3 billion to $10.1 billion to build and another $104 million in annual maintenance costs.

In addition to the expense, a major concern about floodgates is their environmental impact. Aerts said that a two-gate solution would be the simplest and most inexpensive to build and maintain. However, the water displacement of such a system could change the ecology of the Hudson River’s estuary and cause environmental damage to the Jamaica Wildlife Refuge, one of the largest and most productive eco-systems in the northeastern United States.

The report also describes 10 different types of flood protection measures to augment floodgates. Several involve fixing or replacing existing manmade infrastructure. One consideration here would be the bulkheads around the city originally designed to prevent soil erosion but in poor condition today since many are more than 50 years old. Another such “soft” measure would fix the harbor’s natural flood protection systems by ramping up wetland and salt marsh restoration in places such as Jamaica Bay, to help protect the bay’s surrounding homes from hurricanes and erosion.

Some of the suggested measures also could dramatically change the appearance of the metropolitan region’s coastlines. Seven-foot-high to 30-foot-high reinforced concrete walls with steel cut-offs could be deployed in outer-lying areas. Armored dikes with woven textiles and steel-sheet piles for support are also proposed. Along coastal stretches and the FDR Drive, the report suggests the possibility of returning to the days of elevated highways, raised on embankments or stilts.

Of course, spoiling the majestic views in places like Lower Manhattan with unsightly floodwalls and dikes would be unacceptable. Accordingly, the report suggests elevating and changing the grade of parkland in places such as Battery Park City. Another “no regret” strategy, which could be employed in the Rockaways, for example, would hide dikes inside dunes augmented with extra sand.

Although the surge-barrier report explores many different protection strategies, one that is not addressed is the “retreat” option, whereby communities would be resettled from flood-prone areas. “Retreat is not an option, but what we can do is build more resiliently,” declared Aerts. “Coastal cities remain attractive, and the only option we have is to protect ourselves.”

[Eidolon]

Bloomberg On Storm Barrier Idea: ‘Not In Your Lifetime’
March 5, 2013

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) - New York City’s chief executive is skeptical of an idea from overseas on how to protect the city from future storms in the wake of superstorm Sandy.

Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan has signed an agreement with the Netherlands to share information on how to rebuild the northeast to better protect it against tidal surges, specifically including the possibility of storm barriers on the coastline.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Donovan is a smart guy.

“He’s out there trying to get as much information as he can,” Bloomberg said.

But the mayor made it clear he’s not buying the barrier idea.

“You could block off the harbor. I think the environmental issues and the expense would be enormous and not in your lifetime would you see it and I’m not even sure that it makes any sense,” Bloomberg said Monday. “But that, in theory, you could do.”

Even though Bloomberg is skeptical, I don't think the next mayor can afford to agree with him when the next hurricane hits.


More Hurricane Surges in the Future
Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen

By examining the frequency of extreme storm surges in the past, previous research has shown that there was an increasing tendency for storm hurricane surges when the climate was warmer. But how much worse will it get as temperatures rise in the future? How many extreme storm surges like that from Hurricane Katrina, which hit the U.S. coast in 2005, will there be as a result of global warming? New research from the Niels Bohr Institute show that there will be a tenfold increase in frequency if the climate becomes two degrees Celcius warmer. The results are published in the scientific journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, PNAS.

10 times as many ‘Katrinas’

“We find that 0.4 degrees Celcius warming of the climate corresponds to a doubling of the frequency of extreme storm surges like the one following Hurricane Katrina. With the global warming we have had during the 20th century, we have already crossed the threshold where more than half of all ‘Katrinas’ are due to global warming,” explains Aslak Grinsted.

If this is true, then they better hurry up and build these barriers soon...

[NYguy]

http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article...TATE/130329989

City airs global menu of flood-stopping plans
Remedies ranging from a 12-mile flood wall to inflatable tunnel plugs are presented to Sandy victims
as city searches for approaches the mayor may recommend in a comprehensive report in May.

By Annie Karni
March 20, 2013

A 12-mile concrete and earthen flood wall in the city of Paducah, Ky., a protected subway entrance in Bangkok, and a flood-wall system that can be bolted into the sidewalk in Britain were among more than half a dozen international examples of flood protection systems that were presented by the city Tuesday night at a community meeting for Manhattan residents who suffered major damage in Superstorm Sandy.

The gathering was the last of 10 community outreach meetings, in which city officials have heard from hundreds of New Yorkers in order to help draft the comprehensive post-Sandy report that Mayor Michael Bloomberg is expected to deliver in May. In front of more than 100 residents from lower Manhattan, many of whom are still displaced from their homes, a representative of the city's Special Initiative for Rebuilding and Resilience walked the group through a brief description of how some other cities protect their waterfronts. The purpose was to "begin the discussion on what resiliency measures are available to the city," said a mayoral spokeswoman.

Examples included individual deployable flood gates in front of storefronts in Venice, Italy; a $400,000 inflatable tunnel plug still under development by the Department of Homeland Security and West Virginia University; and a new waterfront development in Hamburg, Germany, that is built nine meters above sea level, on artificial compacted mounds.

Urban planners who attended the meeting as volunteer facilitators said they were skeptical the city could afford anything as fancy as a protected subway entrance, much less a seawall.

"The MTA can't even pick up their trash to prevent track fires, so I'm not exactly sure how we're going to retrofit the entrances of stations to be flood proof," said Judd Schechtman, a doctoral candidate at Rutgers University and an expert on cost-efficient climate adaptation. "But these ideas get the creative juices flowing and the main objective of these panels right now is to get ideas no one has thought of before."

Many New Yorkers who attended were just thinking about how to make sure the river never reaches their basements again. "The city should build a demountable seawall," said Arthur Coles, a project manager at an engineering company, whose West Village home was also badly damaged in the storm. "The city has invested a lot on the waterfront, and should now invest more to protect it."

[Eidolon]

Massive Barrier Plan to Save New York from Flooding
By Edward Helmore,
2 Nov, 2012

Engineering firm Halcrow, is involved in a study initiated by New York Mayor Bloomberg to place a five mile storm surge barrier across the mouth of New York harbour.

The plan, which was conceived as part of an American climate change study conference in Manhattan four years ago, involves a design similar to the 15 mile barrier which currently protects St. Petersburg from storm surges.

The proposed barrier would stretch from Brooklyn to Sandy Hook in New Jersey, with two 800-foot retracting gates that would close in the event of an approaching hurricane surge.

Graeme Forsyth, the company's chief engineer of gates, says the system would both protect New York from events like Hurricane Sandy but not impede the busy shipping lanes to docks in New York and New Jersey.

"The beauty of it is that we've already tested the design in Russia, so we know it works," he told The Telegraph." If anything, building a barrier to protect New York is simpler."

Michael Bowman, an oceanography professor at Long Island's Stony Brook University is also involved in the project. He says the plan would cost around $10 billion "a small amount of capital expense compared to the damage from Hurricane Sandy," he told The Telegraph.

"The city is finally going to have to face this. We've been warning for years of catastrophic damage from a storm surge but the city has followed a policy of resilience. That was okay until something like this happens," he added

With five hundred miles of barrier islands, a low-lying coast and an island city only minimally protected by sea-walls, Bowman and his colleagues say they have warned New York planning authorities for years that the city is vulnerable to flooding caused by rising seas and super-storm surges but their scheme to erect storm barriers was shunned.

"They didn't want to hear it," Mr Bowman said. "They said, come back in 30 or 40 years."

But after damage from two hurricanes in just over a year, elected officials are now acknowledging the scale of the problem.

"Given the frequency of these extreme weather situations that we've had – and I believe that it's an increasing frequency – for us to sit here today and say this is a once-in-a-generation and it's not going to happen again, I think would be shortsighted," New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said yesterday.

[Eidolon]

How Can New York Prepare For The Next Hurricane Sandy?
Ariel Schwartz
November, 2012

In 2004, the Stony Brook team focused its efforts on the value of storm-surge barriers in protecting New York City from high waters. Their idea was to install three moveable barriers that close for a few hours at a time under the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, the Arthur Kill area on the southwest side of Staten Island, and the East River near the Throgs Neck Bridge, which would prevent the wall of water brought in by a storm from reaching the shores of Manhattan. The cost? An estimated $10 billion. That’s pricey, but not more than the cost of cleaning up a couple of Sandy-like storms in New York City (overall economic costs for the storm are now estimated to be in the $50 billion range). Those clean-ups will likely increase in amount and frequency as sea levels rise.

The Stony Brook team has since come up with a revised version of the idea: the East River/Throgs Neck barrier and a single barrier that goes from Sandy Hook New Jersey to the Rockaways--something that would be easier to implement because of the shallow waters involved (20 to 30 feet deep compared to 50 to 100 feet at the Verrazano) and also protects more of Brooklyn’s coastline. The team hasn’t yet run simulations for that most recent proposal, but even the earlier three-barrier model could have been a saving grace during Sandy. "It would have definitely helped inside the barrier. In the storm [simulations] we did run, the water levels barely changed at all," explains Colle.

There are issues to consider in the Stony Brook proposals. One concern: There would still be rainwater, runoff, and flows from rivers that could cause water levels to rise. But during a simulation of tropical storm Floyd--a huge rainfall event for the region--with the barriers in place, water levels rose just six inches to a foot. The storm surge would have been higher.

[Eidolon]

Sea Level Could Rise Five Feet in New York City by 2100

Now for the flooding: Sandy’s storm surge topped out at about 11 feet (3.4 meters) above the most recent average sea level at the lower tip of Manhattan. But flood maps just updated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency in January indicate that even an eight-foot (2.5-meter) surge would cause widespread, destructive flooding. So if sea level rises by five feet (1.5 meters_, a surge of only three feet is needed to inflict considerable damage.

How frequently could that occur? Municipalities rarely plan for anything greater than the so-called one-in-100-year storm—which means that the chances of such a storm hitting during any given year is one in 100. Sandy was a one-in-500-year storm. If sea level rises by five feet, the chance in any year of a storm bringing a three-foot surge to New York City will increase to as high as one in three or even one in two, according to various projections. The 100-year-height for a storm in the year 2000 would be reached by a two-year storm in 2100.

With hundreds of people still homeless in Sandy’s wake, coastal cities worldwide are watching to see how New York City will fend off rising seas. Scientists and engineers have proposed solutions to pieces of the complex puzzle, and a notable subset of them on the New York City Panel on Climate Change are rushing to present options to Mayor Michael Bloomberg by the end of May. But extensive interviews with those experts leads to several controversial and expensive conclusions: Long-term, the only way to protect east coast cities against storm surges is to build massive flood barriers (pdf). The choices for protecting the long stretches of sandy coastlines between them—New Jersey, Maryland, the Carolinas, Florida—are even more limited.

[NYguy]

http://politicker.com/2013/06/mayor-...future-storms/

Mayor Bloomberg Proposes $20 Billion in Flood Walls, Sand Dunes to Shield Against Future Storms


June 11, 2013
By Jill Colvin

Mayor Michael Bloomberg outlined a nearly $20 billion master plan Tuesday to shield the city from future Hurricane Sandys, complete with levees, sand dunes, bulkheads, flood walls and a proposed “Seaport City.”

The plan calls for the installation of removable “adaptable floodwalls” in riverfront locations across the city, including Hunts Point in the Bronx, along the East Harlem waterfront, the Lower East Side and the Financial District, as well as a new levee and floodwall system along the East Shore of Staten Island, with barriers that could rise as high as 15 to 20 feet.

The proposal, which the mayor is set to outline in a major speech at Brooklyn Navy’s Yard’s Sandy-damaged Duggal Greenhouse, also calls for the construction of a new dune systems in Staten Island and the Rockaway Peninsula, with a “double dune” planned for Breezy Point.

While the mayor has less than seven months left in office, he also proposed building a new “Seaport City” on the east side of Manhattan, similar to the existing Battery Park City near the Financial District. The new development, which could stretch all the way to Brooklyn, would be built on “a multi-purpose levee with raised edge elevations,” designed to protect the East River shoreline south of the Brooklyn Bridge, while creating a new mini-neighborhood.