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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now, our Climate Story of the Week, which we do every Tuesday on the show, we'll talk mostly about a critique by the group Riverkeeper of the storm surge protection plan for New York City developed by the US Army Corps of Engineers. It's supposed to go to Congress for approval next month, but it turns out a number of environmental groups do not like this environmental protection program one bit.

Our guest from Riverkeeper is also well-placed to give us an update on and some context for the flooding in the Hudson Valley this week that Governor Hochul has called a one-in-a-thousand-year weather event. First, we have to note these climate headlines from the past week since last Tuesday's show. Scientists reported, did you hear this, that last Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday were the three hottest days on Earth since they started keeping records, what they call the average global temperature hit 62.6 degrees for the first time since they started keeping that stat in 1940.

That's a running average of all the daytime and nighttime temperatures at many recording stations around the globe. You know about some of the extremes in parts of this country and others that pushed the earth to that spike. Also, last week, the journal, Nature Medicine, published a study that counted around 61,000 heat-related deaths from that major heat wave last summer in Europe. They suggest that whatever Europe has been doing to adapt to the global warming era is proving not to be enough.

61,000 heat-related deaths just from the major heat wave last summer, according to that study in Nature Medicine. On not doing enough to adapt to the global warming era, well, that brings us to the controversy over how to adapt around New York City and up the Hudson Valley. With us now, we're very happy to have Tracy Brown, president of the group, Riverkeeper, based in Ossining, which is dedicated centrally to protecting the Hudson River. President Brown, thanks for joining us. Welcome to WNYC.

Tracy Brown: Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here.

Brian Lehrer: Can you start by giving us the basics of what the Army Corps of Engineers is proposing and then we'll find out why you opposed the plan?

Tracy Brown: Sure, so the Army Corps started this project after Hurricane Sandy, so it's been already a decade in the planning phase. The mandate after that storm was just to focus on the storm surge. The New York-New Jersey region as you'll remember had devastating property damage and loss of life and disruption to our major critical infrastructure during Sandy as a result.

Congress said, "Okay, Army Corps, we can't have this happen again. What are we going to do to protect New York City from storm surge?" The Corps moved forward with developing five alternatives for consideration to answer that question. At this point now, many years later, there's been stops and starts in the planning process, but they basically are taking that original mandate and are now at the point where there is a plan.

That would be the largest plan and the most expensive plan ever implemented by the Corps. It includes some traditional Corps methods of pouring concrete and putting up steel and building walls and building massive gates across waterways, rivers, and estuaries in the region to try and stop the storm surges that are going to come with these 100-year storms that we experience.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you for that description. You've called the plan myopic because it focuses only on storm surges. You have something bigger in mind, what you call a multi-hazard approach. Can you describe that?

Tracy Brown: Yes, so as we are so painfully aware in that past decade right up until this week as you mentioned in the open, we have many sources of flooding now in the region. We had this devastating heavy rain two days ago. We had a version of that in the City IDA, which took people's lives and created unprecedented flooding even away from the coastline due to sea-level rise and rising groundwater.

For the largest project in the country and the major investment that we're looking at, and that's a combination of federal and local dollars, we really want the Corps to look at all of the flooding, look at it comprehensively, and come up with a plan that addresses, in addition to the surge, these heavy rain events that, as the governor said, are the new normal for us now, and also sea-level rise and the rising groundwater some communities experience that's associated with sea-level rise and our buried waterways.

Brian Lehrer: You just mentioned sea-level rise, more intense downpours, hello, Sunday, and rising groundwater, which is also happening as a result of these downpours very much happening in Vermont, but also in the Hudson Valley. These aren't technically storm surges, is the point of the question that I'm asking you now. Whatever the Army Corps is proposing to protect against storm surges would not have protected against the effects of this week's storm, correct?

Tracy Brown: That's right. Not at all. One of the real challenges there is that if you have this very expensive infrastructure that we all invest billions of dollars in and wait decades to see built, the temptation then, the pressure from the public to say, "Oh, well, we have a gate where we can block off the entrance to Newtown Creek or Jamaica Bay." I know it's not a storm surge and a hurricane, but there's going to be heavy rain.

There's going to be a big sea-level rise, a full tide rise. Let's just close it to address that because I've got flooding. I want some protection from the problems I'm experiencing. You end up using a tool that was designed for something very specific to be used really infrequently than being applied for these other problems because we haven't taken all the different stressors and flooding into account with this investment.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, your calls are welcome on our Climate Story of the Week, the controversy over the storm surge protection plans for the New York City area developed by the US Army Corps of Engineers that are supposed to go to Congress for approval next month. Do you have an opinion or do you have a question for our guest, Tracy Brown, the president of the group, Riverkeeper? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. In fact, Tracy, I wonder if you could describe to our listeners a little bit of what you do because I see your title listed as president and Hudson Riverkeeper. Are you something called the Hudson Riverkeeper and what do you do in that context?

Tracy Brown: Yes, that is part of my title. The Hudson Riverkeeper. I lead the organization. We're over 50 years old. We use the law in terms of Clean Water Act and other regulations to protect our waterways and science and community engagement to protect the waterways, the Hudson River, and also the waterways around New York City. In addition to looking at the pollution in our recreational waters, we also protect drinking water. We protect the drinking water reservoirs for New York City upstate, making sure New York City continues to have clean and safe drinking water.

As we head into this new era, we're increasingly looking also at water quantity in terms of stormwater inundation, keeping our living shorelines, and all the new challenges related to water. Because as people know, water gives life, but water can also take life. We have to be staying in right relationship to these waterways. That's our focus. Really, we try to speak on behalf of the water within conversations like this where most of the voices are terrestrial and people speaking for themselves and from their neighborhoods and their lands.

Brian Lehrer: I think as we're learning, a new in the era of climate change, speaking for the environment is not just speaking for the water or speaking for the planet in some abstract sense of protecting nature. It is speaking for people.

Tracy Brown: Yes, and one of the challenges with this Army Corps proposal is that it's basic approach. The traditional Army Corps approach is to look at the value of real estate and say, "What can we invest in terms of new infrastructure that has the best return on investment for protecting real estate?" With that type of a lens, you end up with a plan that is completely prejudiced towards protecting higher-value real estate and more wealthy communities where people have higher mobility instead of the inverse, which is what the Biden administration has actually called for.

We're not seeing it reflected in this plan, which is looking at social impacts, the socially-vulnerable communities, as well as the vulnerable environmental systems that we depend on. Often, the more environmentally-vulnerable communities and lower-income communities are the ones that are fishing and also relying on healthy living waterways in addition to access to water and affordable housing.

Brian Lehrer: It sounds like part of this translates to, "Don't protect only the coasts because that's where the higher-income people in the higher-price real estate tend to live." I know there are low-income housing projects in New York City along the water to some degree. Generally, these days, it's pretty rarefied property when you can live on the water and not to ignore those, a little more inland affected by climate change.

Tracy Brown: Yes. Well, it's interesting that even though there's been such a boom in building on New York's waterfront because it has gotten better and we have made incredible progress in cleaning it up, but still, the majority of the residents in the flood zones are low-income communities and people of color. The Corps' estimate is that about 60% of the communities within the flood zones are low-income people. To your point, we do need to look comprehensively at people who are vulnerable and landscapes that are vulnerable.

If we are locked into this old thinking that it's just a real estate-based cost-benefit analysis, that gets us off the block in just the wrong lens. That is what has led us to a plan that is limited and myopic as you quoted us in saying. We need to look at everything we're valuing, and what are the priorities for the folks in this region, and then make decisions based on those priorities, not a straightforward financial transaction.

Brian Lehrer: Right. Certainly, some of these places in the news this week, Highland, New York; Ludlow, Vermont, these are not exactly on the beach. Anne in Westchester, you're on WNYC. Hi, Anne.

Anne: Oh, hi. Thank you so much for taking my call and thank you so much for this important discussion. This is really amazing. I agree with the analysis Tracy is giving that this is a huge expense and investment of time and money for everyone that is just too limited in what solution it's providing for what problem. The problems are myriad and big. My big question is, what is the projected impact on the life of the river which Riverkeeper has helped the Hudson River redevelop a lively ecosystem full of life, and what's going to happen to all that with this plan by the Army Corps of Engineers?

Brian Lehrer: Thank you, Anne.

Tracy Brown: We're looking at 12 proposed massive gates across tributaries, so feeding rivers and streams that connect to New York Harbor and the Hudson River in the current plan. There were other plans. This is one of five plans that the Corps is now saying. We want to pick this middle plan and move it forward to Congress this summer. That's where we're at in the process.

There were two other plans that actually proposed just blocking off the entire Hudson River and the western side of Long Island Sound and creating a giant bathtub within the New York Harbor. Fortunately, they're not recommending moving forward with those plans, but this recommendation has 12 in water barriers. Those barriers, these gates, even when they're left open will be constraining all of those waterways.

You're looking at manmade islands, manmade walls, lots of miles and miles of walls along each side of the gates because you get deflected flooding, right? You block something like Jamaica Bay or Flushing Creek. The water wants to go around the side of that block, so they come with a lot of barriers. The in-water structures that will be built will create narrowing flows. They're going to influence the tides coming in and out of those waterways permanently. They're going to impact migrating fish opportunities, navigation, and sediment.

What they will do, especially in New York City where we have a lot of toxins, some of these proposed gates are on Superfund sites. All of them are in locations where we have sewage that flows out when it rains into the waterways. They're going to create new pollution hotspots because the sediment will be building up at these gates, the sediment that is polluted that otherwise would be having its natural flow in and out of the harbor.

Brian Lehrer: Tracy, before we go to another call, I'm looking at a story from our local news website, Gothamist, from this winter about a series of public meetings and presentations that the Army Corps was hoping-- a period of public comment was holding, I should say. A period of public comment was taking place through early March.

It quotes Bryce Wisemiller, the Army Corps' project manager for a related study saying, "We certainly want to hear from as many people as possible, so we really get a good full picture." Now that it's a few months later and the public comment period has closed and you are coming out in opposition to this, do you feel like they've been responsive? If we can assume good faith on the part of the Army Corps of Engineers that they really want to protect the region against climate change, are they hearing you?

Tracy Brown: We're in this really critical moment now, Brian, to see what happens because the Corps is reviewing the comments now. I will say that up until this point from 2018 until now, the Corps has not responded to the public. Honestly, they haven't responded to Congress. Congress went back after that initial mandate in 2018 and revised it twice in 2020 and 2022 and said they also want the Corps to look at all the flooding hazards.

They also want the Corps to look at social and environmental impacts and to prioritize the low-income communities that will have the most severe impacts and make sure that the investments are sufficiently focused and weighted on those communities. It's been surprising to us honestly after the project was planned during the pause in the Trump administration and then refunded in the Biden administration that they picked up where they left off and they didn't respond to those new congressional mandates. We're in a critical moment now.

The key is, really, the people with the most sway are the governors of New York and New Jersey, Governor Hochul, and Governor Murphy. They have the veto power. They have the power to say, "We don't think this plan is comprehensive enough or is innovative enough, or reflects the values of our residents." They're the ones we're really calling out to now to say, "Please step up, get engaged, and get New Yorkers and New Jersey residents." The visionary project that reflects the values of this city, not an old-school Army Corps, federal, bureaucratically-led, cement-and-steel, stopping-the-water approach.

Brian Lehrer: I see on your website, one of the main things you have there is a call to action. You want people to contact the two governors so that they do step in, in the way you were just describing. Do you have any indication that you have the two governors' ears?

Tracy Brown: Not really. We speak. We're part of a big coalition of groups that are working on this. We have 40 groups that wrote joint comments to the two governors. We are having many meetings. There is anxiety among our state leadership that they don't want to lose access to the federal investment. We don't want that either at this. This is so important. We do need to make this investment.

Actions do need to happen, but we see in other communities like Miami, Florida, for example, where the local leadership said to the Corps, "We don't like your plan. We want something that reflects our local values." They went back to the table with Miami and, using the research they already did, have started to revisit other solutions and some of the approaches that we're recommending here. We know it can be done, but it is still anyone's guess if Governor Hochul and Murphy are going to step in and take the lead that we believe they really urgently need to take.

Brian Lehrer: Hiam in South Slope, Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Hiam.

Hiam: Hey, Brian. How are you doing? I'm a proud serial caller and very happy you're talking about this really important issue and President Brown. May I ask, the subject of my call was really to break down the silos between all the issues surrounding climate, but particularly what we call resilience or adapting to climate change and mitigation, which is sustainability or-

Brian Lehrer: -preventing future climate change.

Hiam: -limiting the sources of climate change, energy, and emissions, et cetera. Can oyster beds do a lot of the work that these floodgates are proposing to do? Are there alternatives that are healthy and natural and regenerative?

Tracy Brown: Yes, that's a great question. Using natural systems like oyster reefs and other living shoreline, the technology is actually what we would like for the Corps to be leading with. It's important to point out that when you're looking just at the hurricanes, the 100-year storm that does result in a storm surge, so this big wall of water that comes in from the Atlantic Ocean, the oyster reefs aren't going to stop that.

What oyster reefs and other methods like that can do is they can lower the wave energy and they can reduce the amount of the surge that reaches the landscape. One of the fundamental issues that we have with the Corps' plan and how they are approaching it right now is instead of looking at-- There's basically four groupings of strategies that you can look at with the engineered walls' defense as the third one and the ones that you would like them to look at first would be, what can we do with nature-based infrastructure and natural infrastructure?

What can we do with adapting existing structures like floodproofing, raising structures, allowing some of our infrastructure to be able to withstand some flooding, and then drying up and still function? What can we do with non-structural measures, so buyouts and relocating places that really are just going to continue to be profoundly impacted by our changing climate? Then once you see what you can do with those, honestly, more affordable and more readily-implemented strategies, then you say, "Okay. Now, what do we have left and how do we look at engineered solutions like the ones that the Corps is proposing?"

Then you see where you have maybe lower walls or less walls or less gates because you've taken these other measures. What the Corps is done is they've started at the bottom of that list with the engineer's approach and said, "Here's all the things we can build. Then after these gets approved by Congress that we're building, these walls and gates, we'll come back and tell you what we can do with some natural and nature-based measures around the edges."

Again, Brian, that comes back to the initial question that they were asked that they haven't moved off us, which is just look at storm surge. If they were looking at all these other floodings, they would say, "Well, we could get immediate benefits from reefs, from dunes, from marshes, from stopping building in the remaining wetlands and undeveloped floodplains that we have and you start there, and then you work towards these gray elements once we see how far we can get and what we can solve with those strategies."

Brian Lehrer: With the more natural ones. Hiam says, "Deploy the oysters." We have another caller who says, "Deploy the beavers. They're the best engineers." We won't have time to get into that, but I'm just acknowledging that it's there. The oyster-beaver coalition on the phones with us. Hiam, thank you. Keep being a serial caller. There's also been opposition by many neighborhoods near shorelines in New York City that don't like the visual blight of what the storm gates might look like.

There was also the controversy in Lower Manhattan over the disruptive renovations to East River Park that have now begun. Is that part of your critique or, as an environmentalist, are those kinds of we-don't-like-how-it-looks objections to a climate change protection plan, just examples of NIMBY, not-in-my-backyard rejectionism? Do you line up with those community groups who don't have to look at the gates?

Tracy Brown: Well, we line up with the community understanding what the options are and having a say in what the trade-offs are, right? If someone just says, "You're going to have flooding. I'm going to build a wall," you can hate the wall. Then if they say, "You're going to have flooding. I could build a wall or I could raise your home, or we could do this, do that," and you give people the choices that they have, and then they can start to decide what they value most.

That's the conversation that we should be having, this more sophisticated, nuanced conversation. It's a very intelligent community of people who didn't land by accident in New York City, a city that's defined by the waterways and its position within multiple rivers and estuaries. I think people are sophisticated enough. A lot of communities have already engaged in their own planning processes and have already said what they want and they don't want.

Honestly, we need New York City and Mayor Adams and the DEP supported by our governor and the same in New Jersey to be the intermediaries, to be the people that can bring to the table our smart communities that know what their trade-offs are and then work with the Corps to say, "This is actually the right combination of strategies. This is what we'll invest our $20 billion in to match your $35 billion to get something done."

Brian Lehrer: We're just about out of time, but I want to ask you one touchy question off-subject that many listeners may be wondering about RFK, Jr., longtime leader of Riverkeeper, decades and decades leading Riverkeeper, now running for president and widely seen as a discredited conspiracy theorist in vaccines and some other things. I believe that once upon a time, the founder of Riverkeeper, Robert Boyle, distanced himself from the group because he didn't like some of Kennedy's legal tactics, but mostly on the conspiracy theory-related things. Do you consider his work at Riverkeeper as an environmental lawyer on the Hudson River's behalf untainted to this day?

Tracy Brown: Yes, so Mr. Kennedy moved on from Riverkeeper in 2017 when he relocated to the West Coast. Definitely, before that time, he made some really great contributions. Riverkeeper itself, the Hudson Riverkeeper, actually is the model and the inspiration for a whole global Waterkeeper Alliance movement. There's now 340 waterkeepers on every continent doing the same water protection work. That's part of Mr. Kennedy's legacy.

Brian Lehrer: Tracy Brown, president of the group, Riverkeeper, based in Ossining dedicated centrally to protecting the Hudson River. In addition to president of Riverkeeper, she has the title, the Hudson Riverkeeper. As you've been hearing, her group opposes the Army Corps of Engineers' storm surge protection plan as it stands as being highly inadequate to the multi-hazard conditions that this Sunday's storms were an example of being produced by climate change. She wants you to contact Governor Hochul and Governor Murphy and say, "Reject the Army Corps' plans and ask them to come up with something better and more comprehensive." Thanks for joining us on our Climate Story of the Week. We really appreciate it.

Tracy Brown: Thank you.

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