From the Daily News:
Picture an 80-foot rock barrier rising from the Atlantic Ocean, stretching for 5 miles from Breezy Point, Queens, to Sandy Hook, N.J. — and topped with a new highway.
Or a 1,700-foot wall spanning the Arthur Kill, featuring a pedestrian walkway, a bike path, hydroelectric power and a system of locks for passing ships.
Or maybe a towering structure in the shadow of the Verrazano Bridge, with the Statue of Liberty as a backdrop, complete with twin 640-foot gates.
In post-Sandy New York, plans to harness New York Harbor and its surrounding waterways with such multibillion-dollar projects almost instantly turned more tangible than theoretical.
In the search for answers, it’s now like Robert Moses is battling King Poseidon in the globally-warmed waters around the nation’s largest city.
Proponents suggest the barriers — already successful in Russia’s St. Petersburg and across the flood-prone Netherlands — could prevent a disaster repeat.
Count City Council President Christine Quinn among that group. She’s proposed a $16 billion storm surge barrier as part of a possible plan to safeguard the city.
Count Mayor Bloomberg among the skeptics. After Sandy, he noted that “you can’t build a wall up to the sky.”
But you can build one to lessen the impact the next time a hurricane hits town, engineers and experts say — and the city has already endured two in as many years.
6 comments:
Neither Connecticut or New Jersey will agree to causeways from NYC that will both open them up to more NYC-type development and the redirected storm surges deflected from NY Harbor into their backyards.
And this does what to protect the worse hit areas like the Rockaways and Staten Island.
As usual, it's all about Manhattan.
"The business of America is business." - Calvin Coolidge
Manhattan (aka "The City" to those in "the outer boroughs") is the area's central business district.
How many people, sheer numbers, commute to jobs in the Rockaways and Staten Island?
The Rockaways should end up as a state park, rather than a residential community - similar to Jones Beach.
Manhattan IS the business center AND tourist corridor... which is big revenue for NYC...and, therefore business!
Us poor WORKERS live in the "outer boroughs".
If one of us drops dead at the wheels of big business' money mills...we get replaced PDQ with another "body"!
There's no need to provide much for "the workers" of the metropolis.
This doesn't remove the water in a storm surge, it displaces it somewhere else. The environmental impact statement for a structure that closes off New York Bay would be the first to cost over $1 billion. This is a financial fantasy.
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