Wrecking East River Park can wait, but the Lower East Side and East Village need storm surge barriers for the hurricane season coming up.
The East Side Coastal Resiliency (ESCR) plan that would demolish East River Park is likely to be delayed. “In New York City, which was crippled in 2012 by Hurricane Sandy, the budget crunch will force some projects to get pushed back, according to Phil Ortiz, a spokesman for the Mayor’s Office of Resiliency,” reports the New York Times.
Delaying destruction of East River Park is fine with us, though the reason for it is terrible.
But we need Interim Flood Protection, and we need it this year.
In November, more than five months ago when ESCR was approved, a commitment was made to study interim storm protection. In fact the Deltares report recommended it.
A delay in completion of ESCR will leave the community vulnerable to flooding for more than the original time line of five years. They just predicted that this hurricane season will include several severe storms.
We don’t want to be in a position where we are presented a final report without any input from Community Board 3 and the local community.
Those of us who were here for Sandy have a lot of local knowledge that needs to be incorporated into any study and recommendations.
A press release from Council Members Margaret Chin, Keith Powers and Carlina Rivera made this commitment on Nov. 12, 2020:
“New York City Emergency Management, in coordination with the Mayor’s Office of Resiliency and DDC, will conduct further feasibility evaluation to understand whether there is potential for Interim Flood Protection Measures along the project area. The results of this analysis will be shared with the community.”
It’s time to make good on that promise and find solutions before there’s another storm surge. Hurricane season starts June 1.
–Tommy Loeb, Lower East Side
“Here’s how Coronavirus Could Raise Cities’ Risk for Climate Disasters” by Christopher Flavelle, New York Times, April 24, 2020
Press Release from Nov. 12, 2019:
Another post on the Deltares Report.
yes, the “perfect storm”. good time to re load the campaign , with the addition of competing human service needs it would be tragic ( to their careers) not to soften their
position.
While the reasons for it are tragic, I am glad that our beloved ERP will not immediately suffer the destruction that had been promised by the flood Protection Plan approved by the City councils over the objections of 99% of the EV residents that spoke at the 5 meetings I attended in 2019. Now, more than even we feel the urgency to preserve our beautiful public park as it helps us to maintain our sanity and health during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The study done by that expert from the Netherlands did us a great disservice in several ways. 1) Since that expert never had full access to the cities plans, he wasn’t fully able to evaluate the effects and needs. FOI, anybody? 2) Since the renderings that he produced showed all the trees as saplings, there was no real comparison of the two proposals: the 8ft raising (razing) of the park vs. building a berm over the FDR, thus saving at least 40% of the old growth trees. 3) Nothing was ever mentioned about how the Netherlands (surely experts in building seawalls, resilient or not) has had great success with naturally based resilience: grass, shrubs and trees used as sponges vs. hard seawalls. Hint: when water is pitted against hard things, guess what gives?
Now would be a great time to re-allocate these funds. yes, much $ is needed to help those affected by pandemic. Yes, we need to create jobs and protect our people. Let’s find out how the water got into the LES? MI’m no engineer, but according to informal interviews and testimony I’ve heard most of the NYCHA buildings affected were to the N. end of the park like Ave C, D and 10th St. this is where water, electricity and housing proximity created the perfect storm that led to deaths. How can we protect people without destroying nature? What about building more housing and removing all the 1st and 2nd story residents? Move them up, or into new housing! Put laundry, gyms, retail, storage or community centers on the lower stories. Then everyone will have a nice view from their apartment.
ALSO: IDK about you, but I have REALLY enjoyed having such clean sweet springtime air to breathe inn NYC! Why did the “preferred plan” maintain FDR and all of it’s horrible traffic ? get rid of the dang cars! Now the really tricky part: That bundle of electric cables that runs under the frontage road straight down to Wall Street. AHA- NOW we see the real reason our great berm plan got trashed! $$$$!!! Duh. What a surprise! Just build the berm in a way that allows access when it’s needed. It’s possible! Now, start making a better plan that doesn’t include razing the park. That is unacceptable. Don’t give us any more bogus excuses!