More than five years after Sandy, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is taking a closer look at one of the ideas that caught the public's imagination right after the storm hit: a giant steel-and-concrete barrier that would stretch across New York Harbor and prevent an ocean surge from flooding waterfront areas again.
Such barriers gained prominence in the Netherlands, where a series of structures called the Delta Works protects the southwestern part of the country. But they're also in use in London; St. Petersburg, Russia; Providence, R.I.; and Stamford, Conn. The gates are kept open most of the time to permit ships to pass and water to circulate, but they swing closed when a hurricane approaches. (The gates in Stamford swing upward off the sea floor.)
The proposal will undoubtedly be controversial, given that such a barrier could cost $20 billion or more, and will take years to plan and build. Environmentalists meanwhile fear that the barriers, even with movable gates, would seriously impede the flow of sea life and water. (Riverkeeper says the proposal "threaten[s] the very life of the Hudson River.") But others argue that barriers are a more secure and centralized way of protecting the metropolitan region than the piecemeal approach undertaken so far.
In a series of public information sessions this week, the Army Corps is presenting five options for protecting the area's waterfront, four of which involve storm surge barriers:
- a five-mile long barrier at the southernmost border of the lower bay, between Sandy Hook, N.J., and Breezy Point in the Rockaways;
- a smaller barrier between Staten Island and Brooklyn, across the channel that the Verrazzano-Narrows bridge spans, accompanied by gates across the mouth to Jamaica Bay and Arthur Kill;
- a series of berms and sea walls along low-lying portions of the New Jersey and New York City waterfront, along with small gates across some waterways;
- and an option that would only use berms and sea walls.
The information sessions will be held:
- Mon., July 9th, 3-5 p.m., Borough of Manhattan Community College, 199 Chambers St.;
- Mon., July 9th, 6-8 p.m., Borough of Manhattan Community College, 199 Chambers St.;
- Tues., July 10th, 3-5 p.m., Rutgers University-Newark Campus, 350 Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard;
- Tues., July 10th, 6-8 p.m. Rutgers University-Newark Campus, 350 Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard;
- Wed., July 11th, 6-8 p.m., Hudson Valley Community Center, 110 S. Grand Ave., Poughkeepsie.
For more information on the sessions, see the Army Corps announcement.