The newly- installed tide gate chambers along Fresh Creek Basin, on the eastern side of Canarsie, designed to help prevent flooding and overflowing of the sewage systems.
Photo by Caroline Ourso for The Brooklyn Paper
By Shania Permell- James
March 28, 2022
Ten years after Superstorm Sandy left her mark on New York City, residents of Canarsie, Brooklyn are still scrambling to prepare for the next major storm. A neighborhood that was once never accounted for in the city’s floodplain now finds themselves searching for protection against storm surges from Paerdegat Basin and Fresh Creek Basin. With proposed changes from the city and installed tide gate chambers from the state, Canarsie remains at risk of severe flooding in 30 years and residents have expressed that while these efforts provide decent improvement, they are not enough and leave them unprepared for future storm events.
Hurricane Sandy impacted over 2,800 properties in Canarsie, located in the southeastern portion of Brooklyn. Surrounded by 3 bodies of water; Paerdegat Basin on the west, Fresh Creek Basin on the east, and Jamaica Bay to the south it is incomprehensible that the city neglected to include the neighborhood within the floodplain leaving thousands of residents to fend for themselves as their homes and businesses experienced major flooding with catch basins at Fresh Creek Basin overflowing. Fast forward to today, a $14 million project led by Governor Hochul’s Office of Storm Recovery installed new tide gate chambers along the shoreline of Fresh Creek Basin, on the east side of Canarsie.
The efforts to aid the flooding risk began in 2017 when Canarsie was included in the Resilient Neighborhoods initiative by the New York City Department of City Planning. The 46-page plan, that can be found on the NYC Department of City Planning’s website, details “neighborhood specific strategies for the continued vitality and resiliency of ten neighborhoods in the city’s floodplain.” The three primary goals driving their work in Canarsie are listed as reducing the neighborhoods flood risk by promoting building retrofits and flexibility in zoning to accommodate retrofitted properties, planning for adaptation over time with climate change and the continued risk of sea level rise, as well as creating resilient and vibrant neighborhoods by increasing the capacity of local businesses in the neighborhood.
One of the major recommendations mentioned in this initiative was for homeowners to retrofit their homes by raising it six- feet. When speaking to Harold Jones, Executive Director of the Canarsie Community Development Inc. (CCDI), he shared that due to the risk of flooding in the neighborhood all residents are required to retrofit their homes or run the risk of getting charged up to four times their current flood insurance rate, which after Hurricane Sandy all residents were required to have. “I’m not raising mine,” said Jones when asked how the news is being taken by most residents. He also spoke about the CCDI’s Homeowner Audit Project that provided technical assistance and financial tools to homeowners who wanted to retrofit their homes, which carried a price tag of $1.5 million from the NY Rising Community Reconstruction Plan’s Community Development Block Grant for Disaster Recovery.
As an engineer himself, Mr. Jones applauded the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on their $52 billion proposal to build 12 moveable sea barriers across waterways around Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island and New Jersey, but expressed his disappointment that the project will take 7 years to get started and another 14 years before it is completed, 21 years in total. With the neighborhood set to be severely impacted by flooding in 30 years, Jones is not satisfied by the proposal or current efforts that have been made thus far. Despite the little improvements that have been made within the neighborhood’s waterways and residencies, Canarsie is drastically unprepared for the next major storm that may strike New York City.
Jones shared that he had created an emergency plan for the neighborhood in the event of another major storm, but it is not taken seriously by both residents and politicians. “We are the only neighborhood in this city without a community center. The nearest emergency site is over 3 miles away in East New York,” Jones informed me as we spoke about the community involvement in the neighborhood.
Residents continue to express their dissatisfaction with the city’s efforts against flooding, and community leaders continue to propose new solutions that are likely to help, but just how much needs to be done to change the fate of this neighborhood nestled in between two basins right on Jamaica Bay? This is a question that Harold Jones and other community leaders are constantly searching to answer. There is hope that the current efforts taken may protect Canarsie from minor storm surges, but the fate of the neighborhood against another major storm event remains in the air.