New housing eyed for Brooklyn lots ravaged by Sandy

September 11, 2019 Clifford Michel, THE CITY

A home in Gerritsen Beach, Brooklyn, ravaged by Hurricane Sandy is part of the city’s Build it Back buyout program. Photo by Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY

‘We’re surrounded by water’

The U.S. Army Corps has proposed a 5-mile storm barrier stretching from Sandy Hook, N.J., to Breezy Point, and a levee system between Floyd Bennett Field and Jamaica Bay. Yet the earliest the Corps — which put out a preliminary report on the project in February — will present a funding request to Congress is 2022.

An Army Corps of Engineers map of potential sea walls around the city. Photo: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers via THE CITY

In 2013, the New York City Economic Development Corporation projected such barriers would cost upwards of $20 billion to build — and warned that gates could simply push flood waters to neighboring parts of the city and region.

Thaddeus Pawloski, director of Columbia University’s Center for Resilient Cities and Landscapes, said even a seawall wouldn’t be effective at protecting several southern Brooklyn peninsula neighborhoods.

“These small steps create new pathways for policies to evolve in the future, but it’s still just a step,” he said of the idea of raising the new homes several feet off the ground. “Coastal neighborhoods are going to have to radically change over the next 100 years.

“In order to make these neighborhoods resilient, it isn’t just a seawall that’ll go in front of the bay,” Pawloski said. “That’ll protect against very high storm surge events, for instance, but it won’t protect against the increase in precipitation that we’re likely to see in the future.”

Maisel agreed. “We’re surrounded by water, and flood walls are not necessarily a panacea,” he said.

Working house by house

Along Jamaica Bay, fortification against the elements proceeds house by house, block by block.

Build It Back has rebuilt and elevated some 1,300 homes since the program began in 2013, and while assisting another 6,600 homeowners with repairs and reimbursements, according to the Mayor’s Office of Recovery and Resiliency.

Meanwhile, the EDC is preparing to raise and fortify the shores of Coney Island Creek, with construction expected to start next year.

The Department of City Planning also is looking to designate Gerritsen Beach as a Special Coastal Risk District, which would limit residential development along the waterfront and allow only maritime businesses to open along commercial strips.

Going forward, less politically popular actions may become necessary, experts on the front lines of climate change warn.

Amy Chester, managing director at Rebuild by Design, a nonprofit that focuses on large-scale efforts to make cities more resilient, said sparsely populated areas vulnerable to storms need to get on course toward retrenching, not rebuilding.

“Over the long term in lower-density neighborhoods there should be a plan for retreat,” said Chester. “Because nothing’s going to be able to protect those areas that are in lower-density neighborhoods.

This story was originally published by THE CITY, an independent, nonprofit news organization dedicated to hard-hitting reporting that serves the people of New York.