Underground power lines to be studied

From AM-NY:

The City Council yesterday unanimously passed a bill to explore the possibility of moving New York City's power lines underground. The bill requires the Mayor's Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability (OLTPS) to conduct a study that will determine where in the city relocation of the power lines would be most effective and help strengthen the infrastructure in the wake of Superstorm Sandy.

Sandy left nearly 2 million New York City residents without power. Areas with underground power lines had service restored within a few days, but the neighborhoods with above-ground power lines were without service for weeks in some cases, according to the City Council's office.

Bloomberg: Let 'em drown, just don't stop development!

From DNA Info:

The state just released a long-anticipated report on how to combat rising sea levels — New York Harbor is expected to rise 2 to 5 inches within the next 20 years — but the city isn't on board.

Adam Freed, deputy director of the Mayor's Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability, is worried that the state's recommendations will restrict development in the city, which could hurt the region's economy.

The state Sea Level Rise Task Force wants to add extra regulatory hurdles for development projects in potential flood zones and encourage local governments to move critical infrastructure elsewhere.

Those proposals and others the state is recommending "have the potential to add substantial costs and time to development projects and infrastructure investments," Freed said in a Dec. 14 letter to the state Department of Environmental Conservation, which is spearheading the sea level plan.

"Implementing these measures without a thorough understanding of the cost and time implications or the scope of their reach is premature," Freed added.

Two weeks after receiving Freed's comments on the draft report, the state released a final version Dec. 31 that still includes the measures Freed opposed.

A spokeswoman for the Department of Environmental Conservation said other members of the Sea Level Rise Task Force thought the new regulations were important, so the state did not want to remove them.

The Sea Level Rise Task Force's report is just a recommendation, and Gov. Andrew Cuomo would have to take action to implement it.

Cuomo's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The report, which is several years in the making, covers New York State as a whole, but it also mentions New York City as one of the most at-risk areas for flooding.

The sea level in New York Harbor has risen over 15 inches in the past 150 years and is expected to rise another 2 to 5 inches within the next 20 years, according to the report.

More than 215,000 New York City residents live in an area that has a 1 percent chance of flooding each year, according to federal standards.

A good intentioned bad law?

Op-ed by Bob Friedrich of Glen Oaks Village in the Daily News:

If you live in a co-op or condo and are an owner or renter, you'd better be holding on to your wallets, because the City Council is at it again, with a bill that is poised to create financial havoc in the co-op and condominium community.

Intro 967, sponsored by Queens Councilman James Gennaro (D-Fresh Meadows), would require significant spending not from city coffers, but from already-squeezed budgets of co-ops and condos. And which buildings would be most affected? Not Manhattan's high-risers with fancy names and green roofs, but the modest co-ops and condos dotting the neighborhoods of the outer boroughs.

Although Gennaro says he is working on the language to mitigate its effect on co-ops and condos, the only acceptable fix is to eliminate them from the legislation altogether.

Intro 967 would require that all large buildings undergo periodic energy audits. These energy audits are not cheap and if one finds that your building is not energy-efficient and can be modified to save energy, you would have no choice but to do so. Sure, the goals are worthy, but what about cost? If you don't have a few million dollars lying around to replace old windows or boilers in your building, as outlined in your energy audit, the obscure Office of Long Term Planning and Sustainability would simply require you to finance the project. These decisions are best made by an elected board of directors that knows its buildings, budgets and shareholders. A board may have other priorities for its shareholders' money such as sidewalks, handicapped ramps, driveways, elevators, roofs, lobby renovations or pointing.

Under Intro 967, these board decisions would be superseded by some city bureaucrat who, of course, does not live in your co-op and would not be paying the assessment or maintenance charges required to fund the project.