Seven
years after Superstorm Sandy, the de Blasio administration has no plans
for coastal flooding defense measures to protect the city’s largest
food market — a $3 billion hub that sits on a low-lying peninsula in The
Bronx.
The
Hunts Point Food Distribution Center — home to 8,500 workers at 115
companies that are anchored by three sprawling markets for meat, produce
and fish — only avoided damage from flooding in October 2012 because
the storm surge arrived at low tide, residents and advocates say.
In 2013, officials in the administration of then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg identified an “integrated flood protection system” for Hunts Point among its preferred resiliency projects for the city.
Years
later, city officials have moved forward on just one of the two
resiliency projects proposed in 2015 as priorities for Hunts Point by an advisory group of neighborhood residents, business owners and advocates.
The
plan underway, part of a federal competition known as Rebuild By
Design, dedicates $71 million for food hub electricity independence, to
protect against sustained power outages. It will also bring solar power
and energy storage to two nearby public schools, allowing them to serve
as emergency shelters.
While
residents and advocates support that effort, they say their bigger
priority has been coastal flooding protections for an industrial area
that distributes food to 22 million residents in the region.
The
city Economic Development Corporation’s only gesture on that front has
been a verbal commitment to making the vital components of the meat
market and two other buildings better able to withstand flood waters — a
process called “hardening.” But no funding has been allocated thus far.
“That
is absolutely the lowest hanging fruit… and we were just horribly
disappointed,” said Annel Hernandez, associate director of NYC
Environmental Justice Alliance, which participated in the advisory group
sessions. “To date there has been no commitment for an investment
toward construction of actual coastal resiliency.”
EDC
officials maintain that their work with the community has been
collaborative and transparent, and they say the current strategy
focusing on energy resiliency and “building hardening” was spurred by
available funding, cost-benefit analyses and community priorities.
“The
industrial area and specifically, three buildings in the Hunts Point
Food Distribution Center are vulnerable to coastal flooding. Many of the
other industrial buildings are already elevated or have loading docks
that put critical uses out of the flood plain,” said EDC spokesperson
Shavone Williams.
“The
city will continue to work with tenants within the FDC as we look at
future modernizations and/or redevelopments to identify opportunities to
make facilities that face flood risk more resilient and further protect
NYC’s food supply.”
Maybe the EDC would see the severity of this issue and the vulnerability of the area if there were plans to build luxury towers by there.
2 comments:
I knew it made no sense when, back in the 90s, they moved everything from lower Manhattan to Hunts Point. Now 20 years later they're crying the blues.
Not to worry, the Market, as is Rikers and someday the Airport and power plants will be gone replaced by the Inner Sound, the exclusive waterfront community of late 21st Century NY between Hunts Point and Flushing Bay .. and the Hell Gate.
Flood barriers like they have for London or the Netherlands will be built at Whitestone and the Narrows.
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