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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. As the storm was hitting us Wednesday night, the radio and TV were calling it, and media today are still calling it the remnants of Hurricane Ida, but let the record show it was not just remnants in the way we usually use that word. More people died in New York City from Ida, 13, than died in the whole state of Louisiana, 12, where the hurricane came ashore. 23 people died in New Jersey and it wasn't even a coastal storm like we think of hurricanes to be, picking up strength over the water. It came from New Orleans, up overland to New York and New Jersey and Connecticut, and still packed that punch.

This was something new for our 21st-century climate. 43 people died in total, at last report in the four northeast states of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut. There's a debate now between politicians and TV and radio weather people as to whether the intensity of the storm was expected or not. The weather people say yes. They were using words like potentially catastrophic and predicting many inches of rain in a very short amount of time with major flooding possible. The politicians say nobody predicted a record three inches of rain in one hour, or the total of nine inches of rain in one day that some parts of our area got.

The subways getting stuck and other things like that were preventable or not preventable, depending on who you ask. I'm sure Mayor de Blasio will take a side of that because he's been in the middle of this conversation, when he joins us next hour for our Friday Ask The Mayor call in. Either way, we know we're in the global warming era and we have to be ready for more things like this. We know lower-income communities generally get hit the hardest, and have the least money and political clout to get the infrastructure upgrades that are as good as in higher-income neighborhoods.

One indication of that is that 11 of the 13 fatalities in the city were people who lived in basement apartments in Queens. We also know that it's not just New York where people in subways are vulnerable to the effects of climate change. With us now are two guests, Rebecca Hersher, reporter on NPR science desk, whose beat officially includes natural disasters and environmental health. Her latest piece is called New York City's Subway Flooding Isn't A Fluke. It's The Reality For Cities In A Warming World and Annel Hernandez, Associate Director of the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance. Thank you for coming on today, Rebecca and Annel. Welcome to WNYC.

Rebecca Hersher: Thanks so much for having me.

Annel Hernandez: Thank you so much.

Brian Lehrer: Now let me start just very directly and very bluntly, have you looked at who got killed by the storm in our area, and if who those people are shows environmental injustice?

Annel Hernandez: What we experienced on September 1st was unprecedented. Rain and flooding events that really just demonstrated the reality of the climate science projections that we've been seeing for years and years. Yes, I think that those deaths, the unfortunate disproportionate burdens that many communities across the city are facing really highlight that. Many people that do live in basement apartments are low-income New Yorkers, are immigrant families, and so I think that does clearly demonstrate that.

Brian Lehrer: Those basement apartments in Queens, can you describe why they are an environmental justice issue?

Annel Hernandez: I think they're also a housing justice issue. One of our member organizations in Queens, Chhaya CDC, has been doing a lot of work to make sure that those apartments are healthy and legal for the families that live there.

Brian Lehrer: Before we bring in Rebecca, why did basement apartments in Queens get hit so hard if you've looked into this yet? I'll ask the mayor the same question next hour, but aren't there lots of basement apartments in other boroughs or elsewhere in the region too? I remember in Superstorm Sandy in 2012, one of the biggest things we talked about was the tremendous impact on basement apartments in Hoboken.

Annel Hernandez: Yes, I think we have a lot of maps of New York City showing sea level rise, showing storm surge and the majority of those impacts are in coastal areas, so what we saw with this unprecedented rain event is areas of the city that don't usually flood to this extent experiencing really dramatic flooding. In Bushwick, for example, areas that are more inland from the water from Newtown Creek still experienced flooding that were in line with a category four hurricane. I think that New York City was not prepared for what happened and we definitely need to revise both our storm surge hurricane projections as well as our flooding projections [unintelligible 00:05:30] [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: Right, and one difference between this and Sandy, which people are starting to come to realize is that most of the death and destruction caused by Sandy was to people and structures along the coast. This flooding was anywhere because the sewers were full and for other reasons here, for example, is 30 year old Joey [unintelligible 00:05:49] of Newark, who said he parked his car on a street that normally doesn't flood, but it moved in as the waters were rising.

Joey: I seen the water was almost going to get in there, so I went up the waterway and just put it in my driveway. I haven't seen that since Sandy. I haven't seen that much water in a long time.

Brian Lehrer: How would you compare this generally to Sandy, Annel, in environmental justice terms? If the impacts reveal the same kinds of inequalities, or maybe different ones?

Annel Hernandez: I think environmental justice and frontline communities face intersecting climate, environmental health, and social risks, and I think what we experienced on September 1st, is revealing a whole new layer of it. I think that we need to revise the way that we're looking at this. As I said earlier, it's about sea-level rise, tidal patterns, and flooding and storm surge. We need to look at all of these things cohesively. We need to really start thinking about how we can advance more climate adaptation and resiliency policies in New York City that's equitable.

We need to be thinking about both building nature-based infrastructure as an equitable solution, as well as increasing emergency preparedness and community preparedness for this event. I think one of the key differences with this rain event is that we didn't have days in advance to prepare. I think for many New Yorkers, it happened very suddenly, people on the subway, people driving home from work, so I think that that was the main difference that folks were not expecting this.

Brian Lehrer: We're with Rebecca Hersher, NPR science correspondent, and Annel Hernandez from the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance, 646-435-7280, 646-435-7280 or tweet your comment or question @BrianLehrer. Rebecca, your NPR piece reminds us this storm included the first-ever flash flood emergency declared in New York City, the first one ever. Can you explain, as a science correspondent, what that term actually means and where we would have been more likely to see them in the past?

Rebecca Hersher: Absolutely. Flash flood emergencies reflect a very large amount of rainfall in a very short amount of time, and what happens when that happens is that the water has nowhere to go, especially in places that have a lot of pavement, which obviously applies to New York. You mentioned there are other places that have had these types of emergencies more in the past, and that's true, although a lot of those places are actually in the northeast. One of the most shocking climate stats from the last decade or so is that there's already been a 67% increase in the heaviest precipitation in the northeastern US and that includes New York, and that's according to the National Climate Assessment.

It was, in some ways, only a matter of time before New York City saw this kind of emergency warning because it was only a matter of time before we saw one of these really catastrophic rainstorms. In this case, it happens to be associated with, as you said, the remnants, the very serious remnants of a tropical storm, but it just as well could have been a line of thunderstorms, which is often how we see these warnings.

Brian Lehrer: Tell your colleagues down at NPR to stop using the word remnants. I feel like they're little pieces of carpet and this is one of the biggest storms we've ever had, one of the most deadly storms we've ever had. Your piece is called New York City's Subway Flooding Isn't A Fluke. It's The Reality For Cities In A Warming World. Can you give us an overview?

Rebecca Hersher: Absolutely. Here's a shortlist of some of the cities that have had serious subway flooding in recent years. Boston, London, San Francisco, Taipei Bangkok, Washington DC, Berlin, and then many listeners may have seen these videos from earlier this summer, in central China, 13 passengers actually died underground in a subway. They were trapped during flash floods.

That was really a wake-up call for people who follow this topic worldwide because this has been something that cities have been dealing with for decades. It's obviously something that New York has been thinking about, at least since Hurricane Sandy. It's really important to remember that subways are underground, water flows down. As the earth gets hotter and storm surge gets worse, sea levels rise, rainstorms get worse, we're seeing more flooding around the world in tunnels, in stations, and it's really expensive to fix this problem.

Brian Lehrer: You give the example in your piece that 13 people died last month in a subway flooding incident in Xinjiang China, but you also report that many Chinese cities and other Asian cities are ahead of the curve compared to us in adapting their subway systems. What's a good example of that if you've got one, and what they're doing?

Rebecca Hersher: Absolutely. The reason here is that many of these systems are just newer. Asian subway systems were built more recently in many cases and it means that flooding was more top of mind when they were designed. A good example is Taipei. Taipei gets hit by a lot of cyclones and many of the entrances to subway stations there are raised. That's just a very basic way to keep water out, especially during a rainstorm, like what we just saw in New York. When the water starts pooling on the street, rather than flowing down the escalators, down the stairs, it has to get up over a little lip maybe, or it has to get up a couple of feet to get to the entrance in order to get into the station. That can just buy valuable time if nothing else, in order to close those stations, get people out of them, make sure people don't end up trapped

Brian Lehrer: Patricia in Westfield, you're on WNYC with Rebecca Herscher, NPR science correspondent, and Annel Hernandez from the New York City environmental justice Alliance. Hi, Patricia.

Patricia: Hello. Hi, thank you for taking my call. Brian, I love you. It's so important for Congress to get on board, especially Joe Manchin with the infrastructure bill. If the weather and everything else is saying that we need infrastructure, I think they need to listen because this is very serious and very real, and I don't understand what the reluctance is. We're going to spend the money anyway, so spend it on what we need.

Brian Lehrer: Patricia. Thank you very much. I think Senator Joe Manchin, Centrist Democrat is on board with a physical infrastructure bill, which is the one that might be the most relevant to this conversation. I think he still has his doubts about the so-called human infrastructure bill, but let me get both of your takes on this. Annel, I don't know if you've looked at the physical infrastructure bill, which there's consensus on in Congress with respect to environmental justice infrastructure in a changing climate world from a justice standpoint and a New York city standpoint, have you?

Patricia: Yes, my organization has been engaging in the Army Corps of Engineers study for building resiliency in the New York and New Jersey area. One of the proposals that they were putting forth was a massive seawall in the front of New York Harbor. We really pushed back against that. We don't need a hundred billion dollar seawall. What we need is nature-based solutions across the city.

We need to have living shorelines, our urban forest, street trees, bioswales, and rain gardens for stormwater retention. What we need is community-specific nature-based interventions to help us adapt to these climate impacts that we're facing. The Army Corps of engineers is set to restart this process, and we will be participating in that to ensure that there's equitable coastal protection and equitable flood risk mitigation across New York City.

Brian Lehrer: Rebecca, for you as an NPR science correspondent covering things like natural disasters and environmental health, have you looked at the intersection with respect to the infrastructure bill between your beat and your political correspondent colleagues' beats?

Rebecca Hersher: Yes, I have. The infrastructure bill, as you mentioned, does have consensus in Congress. It includes about 66 billion for rail upgrades. There's an interesting overlap here. The white house has introduced multiple initiatives that are meant to make sure that that type of money gets spent equitably. The white house has directed every agency to examine how its programs are spent and how that money and the benefits from that money would flow to communities, especially low-income communities, historically marginalized communities, communities of color. I think it'll be really interesting to see how if this bill passes, these tens of billions of dollars for physical infrastructure will actually be allocated and who will benefit the most.

Brian Lehrer: Alex in Jersey city, you're on WNYC. Hi, Alex, thanks for calling in.

Alex: Thank you. Great show. As it happens, I actually run a company that I started about six years ago that we work directly with making cities more resilient. One of the big failures I see from tropical storm Ida here was definitely the lack of early warning systems. I work a lot with international organizations and other governments. That is a real key factor that was a failure here, that the right information, although it was produced by the meteorological agencies, it was not pushed forward by the mayor.

There was more of a political failure in my opinion, but there's a grander issue that I'd like the two guests to speak to. That is the United States does not have a federal office for resilience. We have FEMA, which is more of an emergency management and response agency, but we don't have a disaster risk reduction focal point. We do a lot with sustainability. We do a lot with civil protection, but when it comes to designing engineering and engaging for risk reduction, I would like to make a call to the president to say, "We need a federal chief resilience officer," and I would like to get the guest's impressions on that. Thank you very much.

Brian Lehrer: Alex, thank you very much. Let me say by way of further context, before we get to his specific question of that position US chief resiliency officer, Annel, we're using this word adaptation, and that's what Alex was talking about as well in this phone call. Sometimes climate activists try to avoid discussing adaptation, I think because it leaves the false impression that we can just change some things on the ground and adapt, rather than have to really limit our greenhouse gas emissions. What do you think about the balance of attention that the advocacy community is paying or should be paying to the prevention track and the adaptation track?

Annel Hernandez: I think it has to be both. We need to mitigate greenhouse gas pollution and localized pollution. We need to adapt our coastlines, our communities, and we need to build resilience and preparedness in our communities. I don't think it's one or the other, we need to use all of the tools available to us. In terms of a greater focus on resiliency at the federal level, I agree.

I think that there are a lot of different agencies that work on this area, including the Army Corps of Engineers, FEMA, HUD as well, that had a lot of climate adaptation funding that was available, but it has to be more cohesive. It has to be more intentional. It has to prioritize environmental justice. It has to prioritize nature-based solutions because we can't keep building great infrastructure and expect a different result. Building a seawall in New York Harbor would not have helped us during this rain event. We really need to be creative. We can't be reactive anymore. We have to be creative and equitable in the way that we approach this.

Brian Lehrer: Here's another example of why the focus on the shore itself with things like sea walls aren't enough, here's a clip of a guy named Angelo Olmo who works for a grocery delivery service in Brooklyn. He says water came in from the street and from burst pipes and the repair to the grocery stores that he usually works with are going to be very expensive.

Angelo Olmo: Oh. We're in a couple of thousands right now with the pipes busting and everything. We're in the thousands. Thousands and thousands. [chuckles] A pipe burst in the back and then a pipe started slowly leaking from the top of the [unintelligible 00:19:47]

Brian Lehrer: He's in Park slope, which is not along the Atlantic ocean, let's say. Rebecca Herscher, what about adaptation versus prevention? Politically as well as scientifically.

Rebecca Hersher: I think what the caller brought up is something that has certainly been discussed in Congress. It's been discussed widely among advocates for years now. I think it's just really important to remember how spread out climate adaptation is within the federal government. Annel mentioned HUD, FEMA. The department of agriculture is involved in those, the department of the interior is involved in those.

There is a white house office that's meant to coordinate, but I think the idea that there would be one person or group of people who are really focused, as you said, not just on how do we prevent climate change from getting worse? How do we control emissions, but how do we deal with the climate we have? Because remember, even if we cut emissions to zero today, we would still be living in this hotter world with more extreme weather for decades. It's not something that's going to go away. I think the caller is definitely not alone in their desire.

Brian Lehrer: Here is New York governor Kathy Hochul yesterday on this notion of this as what historically would have been called a 500 year, even thousand-year flood.

Governor Kathy Hochul: What we experienced yesterday was literally something that experts say would not happen for 500 to a thousand years. I'm not sure exactly how they know that, but they've said this is absolutely unprecedented. I would say that our system held up well.

Brian Lehrer: That's on the political side saying our system held up well relative to what would be expected, but she also said elsewhere in that news conference that we can't look at this as a 500 year, 1000 year rain event, climate change means that this is going to be happening more frequently. Rebecca, for you as a national reporter, I wonder if you have a take on whether that's the consensus of democratic and Republican governors across the country and that there's a political consensus, let's say, for the kinds of adaptation as well as prevention that are needed, or if this still divides sharply along party lines.

Rebecca Hersher: Well, certainly we've seen in recent years that regardless of party governors and mayors who are actually experiencing this kind of extreme weather, they reach out immediately to the federal government financial help and that need for help goes on for years after the storm. I think regardless of rhetoric, it's pretty clear that states are overwhelmed. We're talking here about what scientists know. Scientists know that extreme weather will get more frequent. We know that it's not a "500-year storm", that it's much more likely to happen than that, but there is a disconnect between that and what's happening.

Brian Lehrer: Some of the particular interests would be the fossil fuel company interests in Louisiana that compete with the interests of protecting that state, which is particularly vulnerable. Things get complicated. Annel, last question, we'll go to you. I see that on election day, this November, I didn't even know this until I read it this morning. Tell me if I've even got this right. There will be a New York State ballot question for a state constitutional amendment that would guarantee the right to live in a healthy environment as a basic right in New York state, like other civil rights. Do you see that as an environmental justice issue, meaning it'll address environmental inequality in the state and maybe even launch a spate of lawsuits to enforce it?

Annel Hernandez: Yes. We definitely see that as an environmental justice issue. I think it is Black and Latino communities across New York City and New York state that are facing a lot of disproportionate environmental burdens and more and more disproportionate climate burdens. I think it is important to give us some legal accountability to having healthy air, healthy water, and healthy communities.

Brian Lehrer: Well, listeners, we'll obviously cover that New York state ballot question more as we come closer to election day in November. For now, we thank Annel Hernandez from the environmental justice Alliance of New York City. We thank NPR science correspondent, Rebecca Herscher, who has the cheery beat of covering natural disasters and environmental health. Thank you both so much.

Rebecca Hersher: Thank you.

Annel Hernandez: Thank you.

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