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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Now, our climate story of the week. This past Saturday, the United States Army Corps of Engineers proposed a 52 billion plan to protect New York City from one of the most daunting effects of the climate crisis, coastal storms and resulting flooding. These severe weather events are, of course, top of mind right now as hurricanes are wreaking havoc in Florida at this moment, reeling from a just about category five, which is the strongest category of hurricane, storm on its western coast now heading east as well.

Cuba is blacked out from hurricane Ian too, and just last week, as Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and other Caribbean islands were inundated by another hurricane in the region, Fiona. Now, while there haven't been any hurricanes or tropical storms yet in the New York City metropolitan area this year, knock on wood, we're approaching the 10 year anniversary of what they called Super Storm Sandy. Isn't it amazing to think? 10 years next month. What better way to commemorate this anniversary and honor what's going on in Florida and elsewhere right now, than by talking about the Army Corps of Engineers' proposal, just out, to prevent future storms from unleashing anything as bad as Sandy in our area, or worse?

But guess what? Their plans are controversial around New York's coastal neighborhoods. Remember all our coverage and coverage elsewhere of how a lot of the Lower East Side is up in arms over the coastal resiliency project that's now underway there? This is not an easy fix in terms of how it affects people, at least in the short term. Joining us now, we welcome back Samantha Maldonado, reporter from the Nonprofit News Organization, The City, to discuss a recent article on this long awaited coastal Resiliency plan, as she calls it. Hi Samantha, welcome back to WNYC.

Samantha Maldonado: Hi again. Thanks for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Also joining us is Thaddeus Pawlowski. He is co-director of the Center for Resilience Cities and Landscapes at Columbia University. A few of you may recognize him as a caller from our last conversation with Samantha a few weeks ago when we discussed the South Battery Park resiliency project and all the backlash to that. Thaddeus, we're happy to have you as a guest this time. Welcome back to the show.

Thaddeus Pawlowski: Thanks Brian. Nice to be here.

Brian Lehrer: I'll start with you, Thad, as your first official guest question. You were a part of the hurricane Sandy recovery effort, so take us back 10 years ago next month, and remind listeners of the damage that New York City sustained from that storm.

Thaddeus Pawlowski: Yes, Brian, I'm glad you asked that. It has been 10 years and it's important to look back on what we've learned over the last 10 years. Hurricane Sandy was a real wake up call for everyone in this region. The global climate crisis came knocking at our doorstep and it was a tragic event. We lost, tragically, 49 lives in New York City and more throughout the region, $18 billion of damage. It was a storm surge event like we're seeing now in South Florida. Storm surge is absolutely terrifying and devastating, and it's something that we really have to guard against in the future because with sea level rise, storm surge events like Super Storm Sandy are going to become more and more common.

You had a scientist on morning edition this morning talking about how climate global warming is creating more fuel in the Atlantic to power these storms. The Army Corps project is absolutely welcome. It's an important start, but it's not enough. It's not fast enough. We need more adaptation measures, more locally led adaptation measures locally. Sandy got us, recovering from Hurricane Sandy got a lot of effort started, but memory fades and political priorities shift. These events around the world should keep us reminded that we need to adapt and we need to do it in different ways than we've done before and maybe we can talk about that a little bit about the process going forward with the Army Corps.

Brian Lehrer: When you were on as a caller, when we were talking about the South Battery Park resiliency project, kind of a flood wall around the lower tip of Manhattan, you were skeptical of it. When you hear the Army Corps of Engineers now has its resiliency plan for the whole of New York City, the metro areas coastlines, do you go, "Phew, finally," or do you go, "Uh-oh"?

Thaddeus Pawlowski: It's hard to say. It's both, we got to be skeptical. I think there's no silver bullet solutions here. It's not just an engineering problem. I applaud the Army Corps for making this important step and really linking us to this $50 billion, not enough, but a start, like a down payment on our long term resilience needs. The execution of these projects really have to be locally guided, and that means a whole new kind of outreach. Infrastructure like this shouldn't be something that just happens to people. It should be something that people are deeply involved in.

You reference the controversy that's come up around the projects in lower Manhattan. It's really unfortunate. These projects should instead be sources of building social capital, of connecting communities, because it's not just that we build a sea wall and we're done, there's a lot of community capital that needs to be built for the challenges ahead because climate change adaptation doesn't mean just keeping out the storm surge. We know that these walls that are proposed by the Army Corps of Engineers, they're just about storm surge.

It doesn't address extreme rain events like hurricane Ida last year. It doesn't address extreme heat in our neighborhoods, which is a really devastating killer associated with climate impacts. Every summer we're getting more and more heat waves. There's a lot more we need to do to reduce the urban heat island effect and to make our city greener and more absorbent of water and more cooler, especially in the neighborhoods that have seen systemic disinvestment. That's the other part of the Army Corps project that gives me pause, is that there's no explicit prioritization of disadvantaged neighborhoods.

There's no explicit statement, except for a letter that came out later, and maybe Samantha knows can talk a little bit about this later,. There was a letter that the Army Corps sent that referenced the justice for the initiative that came from the White House that said, we need to prioritize disadvantaged communities. Environmental justice communities. Paces where pattern of disinvestment redlining systemic racism in the built environment have created vulnerability to climate impacts. Those are the places where investments should come first, and not just investment. Sorry, I was just going to say with the community. They need to pay environmental justice organizations to be at the table.

Brian Lehrer: I hear you. Let's look more closely at that, even than what you were just saying. Samantha Maldonado from the nonprofit organization, The City, you recently reported on, you wrote up the Army Corps' plan to increase coastal resiliency all around our area. I'm going to ask you to provide a highlight reel of what's being proposed in this plan, but I want to first just tick off the 12 neighborhoods around which they would place storm surge gates as you reported it, because that would be the people who are listening right now who are most directly affected.

Folks in Jamaica Bay, near Coney Island Creek, Newtown Creek, the Gowanus Canal, Sheep's Head Bay, Gerritsen Creek, Flushing Creek, and the water between New Jersey and Staten Island. That's a lot of places, Samantha. What are they going to do there?

Samantha Maldonado: What's planned there is a storm surge barrier, which is essentially a big gate that would go across the mouth of the water body, whether it's the creek or the bay, and they could close the gates to theoretically keep out the water during storm surge events. This would happen before the storm. We've seen similar designs in New Orleans and the Netherlands, but we obviously don't have anything like that up here. It's definitely a feat of engineering and those 12 areas, and of course I should mention that some will be in New Jersey across the Hackensack River, those will be the first time we really see something like that in our area. It's unclear if they will come to fruition.

Brian Lehrer: To the point that Thad was just making about prioritizing lower income communities, the environmental justice aspects of this, how does that come into play?

Samantha Maldonado: Well, that's a big question mark. We're not sure yet. It's nothing that said that the Army Corps has given a commitment for or put in writing about how they will both incorporate community feedback other than through the public process, which anyone can submit a comment or call in. There's no real mechanism for explicitly engaging with frontline communities. I know that there is a lot of pushing and engagement from community groups and environmental organizations that are really asking the Army Corps to make that commitment and to do that.

To maybe put together a committee or really just be able to have an explicit plan to engage with these folks who are going to be the first affected if and when there's a storm, and also the first affected with these projects.

Brian Lehrer: That certainly happened during Sandy. Lower-income communities, like in some of the NYCHA housing projects, were more affected than other places and than people in other places. Thaddeus, take us deeper into it because when you express concerns about how disadvantaged communities along the coast need to be prioritized in any coastal resiliency plan, what would that look like?

Thaddeus Pawlowski: I think it's the challenge of our time. It's going to take some really innovative thought about outreach, how we rebuild a public process that can really involve people in making these decisions. This could really be a workforce development project as well as just a simple engineering project. We need to think about this, I think, as a down payment on a Green New Deal that would be the transformation of our coastal neighborhoods for not just protecting against storm surge but building the kind of infrastructure that we need for the economy of the future, for a blue-green economy.

I think we need not just the Army Corps, frankly, I think we need the promise of the Civilian Climate Corps. We need a mobilization of effort that we haven't seen since the New Deal in the public sector. We need for some of those resources to flow to the most disadvantaged communities.

Brian Lehrer: Explain from the standpoint of the Army Corps of Engineers and the specific engineering project that they're proposing, basically, to encase all of the New York Metro area with these storm surge gates, would those be done any differently off the shore of a lower-income community than a higher-income community? Yes, there are lower-income areas along the coast, but there are also, as we know, very high-income communities. Sometimes living along the water is luxury. Would it be done differently, ideally, off one part of the New York shoreline or another?

Thaddeus Pawlowski: This is where we need the outreach process that's missing here because there are no easy answers. There are different tools at our disposal. There are these levees, walls, gates, et cetera, that the Army Corps has contemplated. There's also living shorelines, and there's also the possibility of building more housing in safer locations, maybe elevating housing, and lots of other, what the Army Corps calls, non-structural solutions. We need a public process to vet these different possible solutions for the specific location because it's going to be different in different places. There's no one-size-fits-all solution.

It depends on local geography, local community priorities, growth patterns, housing patterns, and so forth. It takes more than engineers to figure this out.

Brian Lehrer: Samantha, do environmentalists all like this plan? What's the reaction been from local environmental and community groups in some of the neighborhoods affected? Somebody has told me, for example, that people around Jamaica Bay are not thrilled with it because of what some of the effects might be on local wildlife even as they protect the shore from storm surges.

Samantha Maldonado: Yes, for sure, I've heard that a lot. It's a mixed bag in terms of what I've been hearing from both local community members and the environmental groups as well who are engaged on this issue. I think you bring up a really interesting and salient point about the ecological effects here of engineering the shoreline, essentially. That's something I hear over and over. There's a lot of concern about whether or not this plan truly incorporates in the most effective way green sorts of infrastructure here, things that are non-structural, so instead of being engineered, they are marshland restoration or living shorelines, any type of thing that's more natural-based.

On the other hand, there are some communities that are saying, "Well, finally, we've been waiting for 10 years. Now's the time, let's go, let's do this." There's some scientists and engineers who think this is probably the only way that we can effectively protect our property and our livelihoods and our investments from storm surges, just using the magnitude of these engineering techniques.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, if you're just joining us, we're in our climate story of the week as, this past Saturday, the United States Army Corps of Engineers proposed a $52-billion plan to protect New York City from one of the most daunting effects of the climate crisis, coastal storms and resulting flooding. They're talking about a series of flood gates, basically, around the entire New York City Metro region. We're talking about them with Samantha Maldonado, reporter for the news organization, The City, and Thaddeus Pawlowski, the co-director of the Center for Resilient Cities and Landscapes at Columbia University. Let's take a phone call. Corinne in Islip Terrace, you're on WNYC. Hi, Corinne.

Corinne: Hi, Brian. How are you?

Brian Lehrer: Good. What you got?

Corinne: Well, I had a question. I called just a little bit earlier before one of your guests actually just touched on the living shorelines. I had read a year or so ago about what they're doing in China, these sponge cities, which I guess is a similar idea. It just seems to me like the most commonsensical way to go about mitigating the sea level rise is using these green areas for water filtration. You can even have greywater usage, it can be an area of food production. It'll provide a green space. It'll address the urban heat island effect. It can touch on the climate justice issue too, depending on where these things are implemented. I don't know. Is this something that would be more likely to occur than these concrete barriers or whatever they would be using for that? How feasible could this be?

Brian Lehrer: Thad, do you want to take that?

Thaddeus Pawlowski: Sure, yes, I love that question. I think that the caller's pointing to very important work being done all over the world to rethink the way that we manage water and urban landscapes, sponge cities. Also, what's come to be known as nature-based solutions are something that the public is calling for in many places. Samantha and I were just talking about Miami having a similar process where people are calling for more nature-based solutions, mangroves and [unintelligible 00:17:52] as opposed to the walls. They don't do the same thing necessarily. Walls keep water out, and nature-based solutions do a lot more than that but not necessarily keep the water out in the same way.

They do other things that are important from mitigating storm surge, in many cases. One of the most innovative projects that came out of Hurricane Sandy recovery through the Rebuild by Design process was designed by SCAPE, which is the firm of the co-director of our center, Kate Orff. It's called the Living Breakwaters. It's under construction now. It's an oyster reef off the southern shores of Staten Island that will actually attenuate wave action, which means it will reduce the ability of waves to create coastal erosion. It will also be a habitat for sea life. There's already been seals perched on these breakwaters out in the lower harbor as well as oyster habitat and a place for life to thrive again.

These nature-based solutions have multiple benefits for the public and something that we're hopefully going to see a lot more of in the Army Corps work going forward. The Army Corps needs guidance from local communities to know that these nature-based solutions are possible and what's appropriate in different places. Certainly, it makes sense to do wave breaks off the southern shore of State Island, or it might make sense to start to reseed the marshlands in Jamaica Bay, and that's happening in some instances, but maybe that's a program that could be expanded under this future Army Corps appropriation.

Brian Lehrer: Talking about nature-based solutions, somebody just tweeted, "Before sea walls get built, New York City should move out of Lower Manhattan and give it back to nature. Picture downtown buildings with the lower floors adjusted to being boat bays." I don't think we're going to do that. Someone else tweets, "What about closing the subway tunnels with large doors or an inflatable heavy-duty balloon to seal the opening?" I don't know if they're going to do that, but somebody else tweets, "Aren't these floodgates also likely to trap inland flooding and sewage? I keep thinking about the one inch of rain that overflows the sewage and storm runoff system as it is." Samantha, you have an answer to that question, or did they have an answer to that question at the Army Corps of Engineers?

Samantha Maldonado: Well, truthfully, I'm still going through the almost 600 pages of documentation that came out. They have to basically go through all the environmental impacts, and how they would mitigate them. Even though flooding does come up and from what I've read so far, and like I said, still going through it, but they do make some reference to interior drainage solutions. I'm not sure what the extent of those are at this point. It's definitely something to think about. It can worsen that.

Brian Lehrer: Thad, heavy-duty inflatable balloons to seal all the subway tunnels?

Thaddeus Pawlowski: I have to check on this, Brian, but I think the MTA is actually doing something like that. I know they have gates. We're going to have this event at Columbia on the anniversary of Hurricane Sandy, and hopefully we'll hear a little bit about some of the measures that the MTA and other agencies have been doing to harden our structure. Moving out of lower Manhattan is something that we often talk about in academic circles too. I hear it a lot from my colleagues and I feel like we really need to stay pragmatic in this conversation. I know I was saying that this plan needs to be more ambitious. I think that's realistic to make this more ambitious, to make this bigger, because that's the challenges that we face.

We have no choice, but we also have to realize the political and economic constraints of the world that we're in. There's a lot of people that live in lower Manhattan and it's a major economic engine for the country and for the world. In some places like Lower Manhattan, it definitely makes sense to use hard engineering solutions like the ones that we're seeing for East River Park and Battery Park City because people live and work there every day and retreat is probably not something happening in this century.

Brian Lehrer: Judy in Port Washington, you're on WNYC. Hi Judy.

Judy: Hi. Thank you. It's an impressive list of things that the guests want us to think about. I wanted to just put one more, which is when somebody was talking about putting a sea wall across-- Well, I'm sorry. When you put a sea wall somewhere, the water goes somewhere else. Wherever you stop your protection, the next place over gets all that water. I remember learning this, they were talking about a sea wall basically, where the Throgs Neck Bridge goes across Long Island sound, and nobody seemed at all concerned that that would just have sent all the water to Great Neck. I live in Port Washington, which is next door. How is this being addressed?

Brian Lehrer: Thad, you want to take that?

Thaddeus Pawlowski: I wish I could answer that in great detail because I think that's a really important question. I think that's something that really has to come out in the public process ahead. I think it requires also, your caller just is asking really important questions that require us all to gain some literacy on storm surge dynamics. How the water actually moves and how it will change with global warming. I'm curious to know the answer. I do not. I think it's a great question though.

Brian Lehrer: Sam, maybe it's on page 476 of this 600-page proposal. Who knows? Looking at your reporting on some more of it, It's so massive, at least to the eye of this reader. Flood walls, levies, elevated promenades, raised roads, wetlands restoration, "living shoreline," some of which we've just been talking about. These include things like sheet pile, reinforced dunes along Rockaway Beach, flood walls, sea walls and levies along the Coney Island peninsula and along the Green Point Long Island City Shore. Elevated Promenades near the East River Esplanade, also Coney Island Beach, bulkheads, berm and elevated rolls in broad channel.

Also, sea walls at Carl Schurtz Park on the Upper East Side and Hunters Point in Queens, which is across the East River there. It's just so much. Are there any particular neighborhoods that are reacting the most negatively to this initial proposal? I know they're going to take public input over the next coming weeks and months. This is really just the start of this process, but do there seem to be any neighborhoods of the city from what you can tell in your reporting that are expressing the most concern?

Samantha Maldonado: I think it's too early to tell at this point. I'm hearing concern and some enthusiasm from all corners. Again, this only came out on Saturday and it's a lot to digest, and I think we'll definitely be hearing more. One thing that's interesting to me is that the magnitude of this project really can't be overstated and yet there will still be risk. There will still be risk to parts of the city that are next to the places that are getting these protections. There are some places that are not getting protections at all. I think of, for example, Astoria doesn't have those protections, though they did in a former plan.

I think we're going to hear from a lot of communities that are both concerned about what they might be getting and concerned that they're maybe not getting anything.

Brian Lehrer: If they go ahead with the plan as they outlined it, I see construction would begin not until 2030 and would take until 2044. That's how big an infrastructure project it is. As we start to run out of time, Samantha, I understand that the Army Corps is taking feedback from the public. How can listeners share their thoughts on the proposal? Pro or con, or, "Why aren't I included in my neighborhood?" "Why the heck is my neighborhood included in this?" [chuckles] Either way.

Samantha Maldonado: Well, they're able to submit written comments via email or snail mail to the Army Corps of Engineers. There is a website which you can find the Army Corps' website, and also it's linked to in my story, if you go to thecity.nyc. I believe there's also a call line so people can submit their comments there, questions, and also have a look at some of the maps that are included with the plan. You can really zoom into your own neighborhood and see what's going on there.

Brian Lehrer: Thad, I understand that you have an event relating to the 10th anniversary of Super Storm Sandy. You referred to it briefly before, but why don't you tell everybody what and where that is and when it is, if it's something the public can participate in?

Thaddeus Pawlowski: Yes, it's open to the public. I think we need much more opportunity for robust dialogue about this kind of infrastructure and how we're learning lessons from our history to be able to do projects like this better in the future. Everyone is welcome to Columbia University on October 28th, all day, just register for the event at sandyten.eventbrite.com. You can find the information there and thanks so much for having me today.

Brian Lehrer: Sure. You know what? I'm going to throw in one more caller because Frank and Howard Beach is calling in with what he thinks is an answer to the question of where the water goes, which we couldn't quite answer before when there is a storm surge barrier put up. Frank, you're on WNYC. Thank you for calling in.

Frank: Good morning. Thank you for the call. The water is obviously being looked at by the Army Corps. They're not given enough credit. When they put a barrier, they look at the areas around the barrier to make sure that the water that's being pushed away will not go anywhere. As an example, they have a map of Breezy Point in the Option 3A, where they call that berm area around Breezy Point an induced flooding location because of the gate that would be put at the mouth of Jamaica Bay. They're looking at areas that would prevent water from going around the barriers. That's how they take care of it, by calling it induced flooding zones.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much. That is very clarifying. This conversation is just beginning, but for now, it is just ending. That is our climate story of the week for this week. My guests have been Samantha Maldonato, reporter for the Nonprofit News Organization, the City, and Thaddeus Pawlowski, who is co-director of the Center for Resilience Cities and Landscapes at Columbia University. Thank you both so much.

Samantha Maldonado: Thank you.

Thaddeus Pawlowski: Thanks Brian.

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