In late 2022, the United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) released its official proposal for protecting the New York City metropolitan area from storm surges and coastal flooding. The plan projects $52 billion in costs that would go toward building extensive new infrastructure along the coasts of New York. While it seems promising in its ability to fortify the city against storm surge, further inspection brings to light the fact that many of the suggested changes are insufficient or entirely inappropriate. This is most evident in the proposals for Hunters Point, a neighborhood along the coast of Queens that has shifted in past decades into a rapidly growing residential area through the construction of apartment buildings as well as extensive new parks along the water. For Hunters Point residents, the USACE proposal is frightening; it talks extensively of gray infrastructure such as seawalls, levees, and deployable flood barriers that seem impossible to imagine over the gorgeously designed parks.

The Hunters Point Parks Conservancy, a local community-based organization with the aim of supporting and advocating for the parks in the neighborhood, has released an official statement responding to the USACE’s proposal and voicing their concerns. Some of the main issues brought forth by the HPPC were that this plan disregards the green infrastructure that already exists within the park’s design. For instance, it involves the building of a seawall over the wetlands in the park, which function to absorb excess seawater and are so effective that they “took no damage from flooding” during Hurricane Sandy, according to the HPPC’s statement. The Conservancy holds the stance that the Army Corps of Engineers should “continue to explore Natural and Nature Based Solutions, build on the extensive work already completed and being planned by the City and State when considering waterfront design options.”

A conversation with Jessica Sechrist, the executive director of the HPPC, revealed one of the most concerning suggestions brought forth by the plan: a seagate that would sit at the opening of Newtown Creek as a form of protection against storm surge to prevent the creek from overflowing. Sechrist explains that this piece of infrastructure would further reduce the water flow between the creek and the East River, preventing the Combined Sewer Overflows, a facet of New York City’s sewage system which combines sewage with rainwater and thus overflows during wet weather events, from washing away and would therefore threaten the neighborhood with excessive sewage in the waterways. “There is a concern”, Sechrist says, “that in the event of a non-Sandy type of hurricane where we just get very heavy rain without an associated storm surge, Newtown Creek will flood because there are now more limitations to its ability to go anywhere, and when these floods happen, it will flood with raw sewage [instead of seawater].”

To explain how it is possible for a federal plan to be so ignorant of the needs of the community and the functions of its waterways, the Newtown Creek Alliance’s official response to the proposal demonstrates that the storm surge projections utilized by the Army Corps were calculated based on data from 1983-2001, and therefore “other factors (like the impact an increased water-level could have on river flows) were excluded.”

The data also is only focused on storm surge, which Sechrist explains doesn’t show the full picture: “[recent flooding events] are related to a hurricane that comes, and not because it brings a storm surge, but because it dumps a huge amount of rain that overwhelms the sewage system and the drainage system and… causes flooding in the subways, basement apartments, etc.” The biggest threat when it comes to flooding in Hunters Point is not necessarily storm surge but simply a rising water table due to climate change and intense wet weather, which the USACE’s proposal fails to acknowledge.

Fortunately, Sechrist also assures that most of the USACE’s proposals are unlikely to come to fruition due to the successful advocacy of the community in conjunction with other groups such as the Newtown Creek Alliance and North Brooklyn Parks Alliance. The plan is still in the early stages and is subject to much change before its projected construction start date in 2030.

Photo: Rendering of storm surge barrier at mouth of Newtown Creek (130 foot opening) via CREME design, by the Newtown Creek Alliance. http://www.newtowncreekalliance.org/hats2023/.