New York City prepares for next superstorm, climate challenge

This storyis part of CBC Newsspecial coverageof climate change issues in connection with the United Nations climate change conference (COP21) being heldin Paris from Nov. 30 to Dec. 11.

Three years ago, faced with the challenge of cleaning up afterSuperstormSandy, JosephTironehelped convince his fellow Staten Island homeowners that the best way to deal with another storm wasn't to rebuildbut retreat.

Tironeorganized a mass buyout with the state, and the residents of Oakwood Beachsold their homes, which were then demolished to allow nature to reclaim the land and provide a natural barrier to neighbourhoods further inland.

"So when these homes are gone and everything starts to grow back, nature will do what it intends to do,"Tironesays. "It would be to act as a sponge. As the water comes init'sabsorbed,as opposed to going further and further inland."

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To date, all but a few dozen of the 314 homes here have been sold, at a total cost of approximately $117 million US.

Demolition, though, has been slow, leaving the once thrivingoceansidecommunity now a patchwork of empty lots and abandoned buildings.

"What's amazing to me was how they allowed this building in this area in the first place,"Tironesays now, surrounded by four-metre high reeds that cover the marshy area on Staten Island's eastern shore.

As New York prepares for the dual challenge of another Sandy-like storm and potentially rising sea levels,OakwoodBeach has become a case study in how seaside communities might deal with the effects of climate change.

No retreat in Manhattan

A half-hour drive away, in Manhattan, where gleaming towers crowd up against the waterfront, retreat isn't an option, says DanZarrilli, whoheads the New York mayor's Office of Recovery and Resiliency.

He oversees a 10-year, $20-billion plan that includes everything from building up coastal defences to upgrading building codes.

"It's tailored investments across the city,"Zarrillisays of the plan. "It's not this one big silver bullet solution that we're going to wallourselvesoff from the ocean."

One of the biggest, and so far approved, projects is called the Big U. It would create a berm, essentially a grass-covered hill, snaking from the East Side around lower Manhattan to act as a natural slope to protect the city from a storm surge.

The project won an international design contest and is in the first stages of planning.

But the challenge, says Amy Chester, executive director of Rebuild by Design, which ran the contest, is to seamlessly integrate the Big U with thecity. The first section runs along the East River, a saltwater strait,near a large section of public housing.

"It's not going to just protect the public housing residents from storm surge, but its also going to absorb water from rain events, and create recreation areas for the residents to come play," Chester says.

Still, Columbia Universityclimatologist Klaus Jacob says the city isn't looking far enough into the future withits plans. He says with sea levels predicted to rise as much as two metres by the year 2100, the threat of future storms will only be compounded, and infrastructure built now will be rendered obsolete.

"As sea levelrises, it needs less and less severe storms to reach the same height as the flooding thatSandy reached," he said. '

Resettlement

Jacob says that relocation and resettlement are the only sustainable options for New York, and he points out the irony that New York City has been built on most of it's low-lying areas, while the higher, safer grounds are used as cemeteries.

His ideas though are considered radical. Like the suggestion to turn some streets in lower Manhattan into canals (in some cases returning them to their original state from past centuries) to better control water flow.

"You have to set aside a good fraction of a trillion dollars, several hundred billion dollars, and right now that's not inanybody'smental budget, let alone a real one," he says.

So is New York ready for another Sandy?Zarrlllisays the city's plans can be adapted for future challenges.

"We're safer today than we were when Sandy hit, butwe'll have a lot more to do before we'll be satisfied."

With the Big U not set to break ground until 2017, Amy Chester says more time is needed.

"No, we're not ready for another Sandy and we probably won't be ready for another Sandy for another generation or two," she says. "But the good thing is a lot of people are paying attention right now."

Jacob also says it will take more than time.

"We probably need still one or two moreSandysbefore the political decision makers will really listen to their own communities," he says.

Back on Staten Island, as reeds nearly four-metres high creep closer and closer to abandoned homes,Tironeworries about new construction along other parts of the waterfront.

"It's only three years after the storm and people have short memories," he says.

For him and the residents ofOakwoodBeach, their fightis over, and now, whatever climate change brings, he says, at least this part of Staten Island will be ready, with nature providing the best defence.