$52.6 billion.
That's how much the Army Corps of Engineers thinks it
will take to protect the New York City area from
coastal storms.
The monster storm has created a mess in New York
City.
Things are definitely getting worse.
The water is now up to my ankles.
The world's financial capital paralyzed by Mother
Nature.
This region that never sleeps was in a coma.
We don't want the images that we saw of lower
Manhattan in complete darkness. Taxi cabs sitting
in flooded waters, subway systems turning into
waterfalls. We can't operate like that.
If we get another event like a Hurricane Sandy, more
people will die, more property will get damaged.
Doing nothing will leave this area exposed to severe
coastal storm risk.
As we know from Hurricane Sandy, at some point, it
will cost tens of billions of dollars of future damages
and is a severe threat to life safety for some of
these low-lying areas.
This region is, in a lot of ways, part of the lifeblood
of our country.
And so investing into it is going to pay back not just
the region, but the country overall.
The economy of the New York City area alone was over $1
trillion in 2020.
That's over 5% of the whole country's economy.
But there are a lot of different ways to protect
the over 500 miles of New York City's regional
coastline.
You could protect it simply by putting a wall up.
But for anybody who cares about waterfront activity or
access to our ferry system or the beautiful views you
get and the economic activity, that's not an okay
solution.
So will the $50 billion plan proposed from the Army Corps
of Engineers work?
And is it worth the money?
My name is Bryce Wisemiller.
I'm a project manager at the New York District of the
US Army Corps of Engineers.
I've worked there for 33 years.
I think the New York and New Jersey Harbor and
Tributaries is probably going to be the pinnacle of
the studies that I've worked on.
The New York and New Jersey Harbor and Tributaries
Study, also known as the HAT study, was commissioned
in 2013.
The study looks at how to protect the New York City
area from another Hurricane Sandy.
And this whole project came about because of Sandy.
A lot of people suffered.
People died. And that's why this plan is before us
today, because we don't want that to happen again.
The tentatively selected plan 3B is what Wisemiller
and his colleagues think is the most efficient way to
manage coastal storm risk in the region.
Since this study began, we had five alternatives that
we've been evaluating, and we honed in on this one,
which we refer to as Alternative 3B.
It is our tentatively selected plan.
And Alternative 3B basically has eight primary features
throughout the study area.
There's a large church gate structure on the Arthur
Kill, the Kill Van Kull that protects the inland
area of New Jersey and the backside of Staten Island.
There's also a shoreline-based measure, a
very long one, with surge gates in South Brooklyn and
Queens that encompasses Jamaica Bay.
And then there's three smaller surge gate
structures on some of the creeks in Brooklyn and
Queens, Gowanus, Newtown and Flushing Creek.
And then there's three shoreline-based measures in
Jersey City, across the river from where we are now,
Lower Manhattan and East Harlem area.
The plan also includes features that mitigate
induced flooding and special provisions for
low-lying areas.
This project will put in completely different
structures and completely change the way we relate to
the water. You want to be protected and not flood
during a storm but still want to live along the
coast. This plan says, well, the only way to do
that in certain areas is to be behind a very tall wall.
Some of the other plans proposed in the study take
different approaches. For example, plan two, as shown
in yellow, would build a huge storm surge gate from
New Jersey to Rockaway Point.
But there are a lot of flaws to that approach.
By doing nothing inside and kind of relying on the
silver bullet solution on the outside, I think left
our region more vulnerable.
But most experts aren't being too particular about
the details of the plan.
Our biggest concern is going to be that the project moves
forward and that the project takes place in a way
that is consistent with everything New Yorkers
expect from New York City: not shutting us off from our
waterfront, not leaving certain parts of the city
vulnerable, not causing other problems as it
protects us from coastal inundation.
The Army Corps of Engineers says the designs proposed
maintain the current views of the New York City area
while prioritizing safety.
We are looking forward to trying to figure out how
better to do these features.
These are initial concepts and hopefully in time we'll
be able to develop them better.
We don't like change as humans, but I think the
choice is, do you want to live at constant risk of
flooding or do you want protection?
If you still want to live in that place and live with
the protection, you're going to have to find ways
to live with the adaptation that comes.
All of the suggested plans are designed to protect
against a 100-year events, meaning storms that are only
likely to happen once in 100 years.
Alternative 3B is the alternative that has the
biggest bang for the buck at that event.
It might generate greater bang for the buck in terms
of net benefits.
If it was designed for the 200-year or 500-year event,
or possibly in some areas, maybe a lesser event.
So there's a lot of design work.
So for that reason, we can't really say exactly how
tall these structures ultimately might be.
And the only reason we're able to justify the $52
billion first cost on this alternative is because of
all the damages that can still exist in this vast
study area.
Plan 3B will cost over $52 billion and take 14 years to
complete. 65% of the funds would come from federal
sources and 35 non-federal.
It will cost about $350 million annually to maintain
. Breakers and seawalls are the most expensive line
item, followed by levees and flood walls.
Our current estimate for the first cost, the construction
of it, is $52.7 billion, of which a third is just in
contingency because we have a lot of unknowns related to
some of the design features and a lot of details left to
be worked out. The overall present value cost is $76.2
billion and that has a benefit cost ratio we
estimate to be about 2.5.
So that kind of speaks to just how severe the damages
in the coming 50 years, which is our period of
analysis, could be.
Will it become even more expensive to live in New
York City?
Well, look, there is no question that climate change
is going to cost us.
Right? We're going to have to pay to dig ourselves out
of the hole that we're in.
Experts say that bill will be paid by U.S.
taxpayers in one form or another.
It will ultimately come from us, but kind of spread out
nationally and at the state levels.
It shouldn't have a direct impact on things like, say,
property taxes at some point.
Though, at the same time, it's unclear how these
things will affect property taxes, whether it's, again,
the flood or the wall.
These are changes to the places that we live.
We're all in this climate crisis together.
And whenever there's a disaster or a federal
emergency, we all use our taxpayer dollars to pay for
other's emergencies, whether it's a tornado in
the Midwest or the flooding of the Mississippi.
We've been paying for each other's disasters
throughout.
Frankly, traditionally, whenever the federal
government does post-disaster recovery
programs, it's a one-off.
It's a grant program.
You have to apply for it, whatever. We assume that
funding highways and transportation systems is an
ongoing investment.
You didn't just build the interstate system and say,
we're done with it. That's the end of that federal
program. And I think going forward, we're going to have
to realize that that kind of predictable,
formula-based federal funding is actually what
states and cities need to do the kind of planning that
allows highway investments and other similar
investments to take place.
Of course, none of this is happening tomorrow.
Oh, gosh, construction is years and years away.
Right now, we're focused primarily on just getting
the study done, which hopefully will get done in
2024. And then it's up to Congress.
These are long-term plans.
There's no way to build massive civil infrastructure
in a hurry.
Construction would start in 2030, and all of those
features we assume to be done in 2044 time period.
Some might be quicker, and certainly we would look to
try to advance as many as early as possible.
It's up to the Army Corps and to the states to ensure
that this is done right and done in a way that allows
all voices to be heard.
No one should be caught by surprise by this plan
because it has big implications.
You can't keep the ocean at bay and have the coastline
look exactly the same.
Experts say it's important to keep asking questions.
Why is a 20-foot wall the answer here when it's not
the answer in a different project being done somewhere
else? And there's a lot of plans for 20-foot walls in a
lot of the city and in places in New Jersey.
And I think as we understand the nature of
that change, I think it's fair to ask, is that the
only way to be protected?
We know that disproportionately the
people who are at risk are lower income people.
They're often people of color.
It's critical that we engage the communities that
have been marginalized, the communities who have been
left out of conversations, frankly, the communities
that are in harm's way because of policies of the
past that put those communities there.
And we're looking for all the feedback we can get by
March 7th, our current comment closing date.
The Army Corps, to their credit, has a very good
website on this project and they have been doing a lot
of community meetings on it, a lot of open houses.
But I'd also encourage people to engage with their
local and state governments on this.
The Army Corps can't do this project unless the
states agree to it.
Well, we certainly hope that this plan can be worked and
be supported by the people of New York and the elected
officials. But ultimately all we do is make
recommendations and we work on behalf of the nonfederal
sponsors and trying to advance these plans to the
extent that they're supported by the people and
the elected officials.
So is it time for residents, myself included, to leave
the New York City area?
It opens up a lot of opportunity for residents to
rethink and reconsider whether living along the
coast is worth the risk and worth the adaptation to that
risk.
New York City has thus far not developed a formal
program for climate migration or for buyouts,
but it is something that I think ultimately we are
going to need. The challenge is that we have a
lot of people who live in dangerous way in a city
where we also have a housing crisis.
But we don't know how to do buyouts in dense urban
areas. And that's something that this gives us the
opportunity to contemplate.
And that also includes, you know, where will people go
if we want to retain them?
How can we make sure that the land that's not at
risk, is in the neighborhoods that are not
at risk, are ready to receive what could be
climate migrants?
Would you rather have a wall or is it time for this
community to say, yeah, we're ready, let's be bought
out while we can be?
So really, the way you have to think about it is, well,
what would it cost to protect this given area
versus what would it cost to relocate those people
somewhere else?
And you want to think about the financial cost, of
course, there's also a social cost that you'd have
to take into account.
And you'd have to think about the fairness of it
because the reality is a purely economic analysis
will inevitably lead to displacing more low-income
people.
Either way, the Army Corps of Engineers wants to focus
on protecting against another Hurricane Sandy.
I'm just hopeful that we're able to get something
recommended to Congress coming out of this study
that's supported by hopefully the two sponsors
as well as many of the communities so that we can
try to not have a repeat of Hurricane Sandy again.
We have baked into the environmental review process
the assumption that doing nothing means things remain
the same. That's not accurate in a dynamically
changing climate.
In the meantime, residents can, however, start to
prepare for climate change now with these three simple
steps.
Well, first of all, I would say it comes from paying
attention to the weather. Too many people think that
no matter how bad the weather is, it's still okay
to go out. It's still okay to drive down the street.
It's still okay to order a burrito so that somebody
else has to get in their car or on their bike and
bring it to you. Right.
We need to take weather seriously.
The second thing is people do need to think about how
you weatherproof your home.
How do you manage water when it comes in?
How do you prevent that flooding from being
catastrophic? And so how you do the kind of
equivalent of defensive driving as you think about
managing your property is really, really important.
Lastly, we're doing the stopgap measures in the
interim so that people aren't fully unprotected.
That is around education, that is around the things
that people can do for themselves. It may not
prevent the problem altogether, but it could
mitigate the harm. All New Yorkers and frankly, all
Americans have to realize there is an element of
personal responsibility, especially in the face of a
changing climate.
You don't get a lot of opportunities to spend $50
billion. So if we're going to spend that much money,
let's make sure we get it right.