The Lower Manhattan Coastal Resilience project is one of the largest climate infrastructure investments in the city’s history
Building a Wall Against the Water
Lower Manhattan sits at the edge of two rivers and at the foot of one of the world’s most valuable concentrations of real estate, economic activity, and critical infrastructure. It is also, as Superstorm Sandy demonstrated catastrophically in October 2012, deeply vulnerable to flooding. The water that inundated Lower Manhattan during Sandy caused billions of dollars in damage and disrupted the city’s financial district, transit infrastructure, and residential communities for months. Now, the city is moving forward with a plan to protect the southern tip of the island with a multi-billion dollar coastal defense system. Reporting by Bloomberg News identified the Lower Manhattan Coastal Resilience project as a $1.45 billion investment — one of the largest single climate infrastructure commitments in New York City’s history.
What the Project Involves
The Lower Manhattan Coastal Resilience project involves a series of physical interventions designed to protect the neighborhood from storm surge and gradual sea level rise. These include the construction of elevated berms, floodwalls, and redesigned public spaces along the waterfront from the Battery to the Financial District. The design was developed through years of planning, community engagement, and engineering analysis. It draws on models of flood risk that project sea levels rising by several feet over the coming decades as a result of climate change, and on storm surge scenarios that include events more severe than Sandy.
The Science Behind the Stakes
Sea level rise projections for New York City are sobering. The NYC Panel on Climate Change has published detailed projections showing that the city can expect sea levels to rise by one to two feet by the 2050s and two to four feet by the end of the century under mid-range emissions scenarios. More extreme scenarios project higher increases. Storm surges on top of already-elevated sea levels will increase the frequency and severity of flooding events that currently occur only during major storms.
A $1.45 Billion Bet on Resilience
Critics of the project have raised questions about whether physical barriers can provide adequate long-term protection against the scale of climate-driven sea level rise projected for the region. Some engineers and climate scientists argue that the barriers being built will provide meaningful protection for the next several decades but will eventually be overwhelmed if greenhouse gas emissions are not drastically reduced. Proponents counter that the alternative — doing nothing — is clearly worse, and that the project buys time for both the city and the world to develop and deploy the deeper solutions that long-term resilience requires. The Center for Climate and Energy Solutions provides analysis of sea level rise impacts and adaptation strategies that is relevant to understanding the choices facing New York City and other coastal cities globally.
Who Pays and Who Benefits
The Lower Manhattan Coastal Resilience project is funded through a combination of federal, state, and city sources, including significant federal disaster mitigation grants secured in the aftermath of Sandy. The project’s beneficiaries include some of the most expensive real estate in the world — the banks, law firms, and luxury residential buildings of the Financial District — as well as the Battery Park City residential community, the 9/11 Memorial, and the transit infrastructure that serves hundreds of thousands of daily commuters. NYC Office of Recovery and Resiliency maintains updates on the project’s progress and timeline. The equity dimensions of who gets flood protection and who does not are a subject of ongoing advocacy by environmental justice organizations who note that communities of color in low-lying areas like Red Hook, the South Bronx, and the Rockaways have often received less attention and investment than wealthier coastal neighborhoods.
