The killer storm that pummeled the East Monday and left the nation's largest city with a crippled transit system, widespread power outages and severe flooding has resurfaced the debate about how best to protect a city like New York against rising storm surges.
"Hurricane Sandy is a wake-up call to all of us in this city and on Long Island," Malcolm Bowman, professor of physical oceanography at State University of New York at Stony Brook, told NBC's Richard Engel, who surveyed the damage from a police helicopter Thursday. "That means designing and building storm surge barriers like many cities in Europe already have."
Bowman points to storm surge barrier projects in St. Petersburg, Russia, and in the Netherlands as models. In the Netherlands, a country where a considerable part of the population lives below sea level, such barriers help control flooding in some of the most densely populated areas.
"If we had such barriers in place during Hurricane Sandy there would have been no damage at all," Bowman said.
Before the storm, Mayor Michael Bloomberg's administration had said it was working to analyze natural risks and the effectiveness of various coast-protection techniques, including storm-surge barriers. But officials had noted that barriers were only one of many ideas, and they have often emphasized more modest, immediate steps the city has taken, such as installing floodgates at sewage plants and raising the ground level while redeveloping a low-lying area in Queens.
"It's a series of small interventions that cumulatively, over time, will take us to a more natural system" to deal with climate change and rising sea levels, Carter H. Strickland, the city's environmental commissioner, told The New York Times this summer.
Sandy sent a record 14-foot storm surge into New York Harbor, flooding subway tunnels and airports. It forced the closure of the stock market for two days, the first time that's happened for weather-related reasons since 1888. There's no estimate yet for the cost of the devastation in New York City, but forecasting firm IHS Global Insight put the cost of the damage along the coast at $20 billion, plus $10 billion to $30 billion in lost business.
Graeme Forsyth, an engineer for CH2M Hill in Glasgow, Scotland told The Associated Press that his firm's early-stage proposal for New York is a levee-like barrier that would stretch five miles from the Rockaway peninsula in Queens on Long Island to the Sandy Hook promontory in New Jersey. The barrier would stop a surge of 30 feet, twice the height from Sandy. Gaps would allow ships, river water and tides through, but movable gates could close off all of New York Bay from the Atlantic when necessary. The barrier would protect most of the city, with the exception of Rockaway itself. It would also shield parts of New Jersey.
An animation, produced by the Dutch company Arcadis, shows how a sea gate could protect New York Harbor when a storm surge is imminent. The gates would close and block the water from entering the harbor until the danger has passed.
"Some people may say that storm barriers are an extreme solution," Bowman told NBC News. "I just would say it's bold, it's imaginative, it's permanent in the sense that it could protect the city for another 150 years. The Europeans have done it, why can't we?"
Some scientists, however, say there needs to be a holistic approach and that barriers are only one part of the solution.
Cynthia Rosenzweig, a senior research scientist at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies at Columbia University, told NBC News that as the region rebuilds, developers must take into account rising sea levels.
"The better way is for New Yorkers to be smart from engineered solutions like tidal barriers, fixing the subways where they're vulnerable, fixing our sea walls, remaking our wetlands so that we can, across our whole region and for all our 21-and-a-half million people, protect against the next Hurricane Sandy," Rosenzweig said, adding that even the Dutch now admit they can't protect everyone with barriers.
In the wake of Sandy, Bloomberg, too, appeared skeptical.
"I don’t know that I think there’s any practical ways to build barriers in the oceans, when you have an enormous harbor like we do," he said in a press conference.
But for Bowman, the time to act is now.
"It's a question of national security. It's a question of survival. It's a question of the future population being able to live there so it's taken very, very seriously," he said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Wrong! Try the flooding you get from all that rain, the two towns wiped off the New Jersey map by a failed levee, the 90 mph winds, etc. A sea wall is built to protect against a certain set of storms and fails when one that exceeds that comes in. Note that New Orleans has levees to withstand only Cat 3 hurricanes so when a Cat 4 or 5 comes along or a Cat 3 and a levee failure happens, you get Katrina. Sea walls will eventually fail unless you maintain them, which we almost never do.
The people of N.Y. City should look at the pluss side of Sandy.
1. It cleaned up the OCCUPY wALL sT. BUMS.
2. iT GOT A BUNCH OF PUNKS OUT OF THE SUBWAYS.
Note to US - just stop it. You can't begin to afford a mega-project like a surge-barriers. Any changes will have to be incremental.
The Dutch spend a billion Euros ANNUALLY on maintaining and improving their storm surge protection system. They have in place a plan to deal with a sea level that rises 100 feet by 2100. With two-thirds of its land area at or below sea level and no where else to migrate to, it is a matter of survival.
Re flip-1747655
I agree with you. I hate to think what would happen to this world if people with your kind of "herd mentality" procreate.
Don't know if surrounding the "Financial Capitol of the World" is a workable idea or not, but if it is done, I'll bet $100 that it isn't the NYC bankers and residents who'll wind up paying for it.
The Government has been manipulating the weather for decades, when you mess with things that you shouldn't the long term results can be disastrous.
After we hire the Dutch to build a protective storm barrier, we should honor them by returning New York to its original name: Nieuw Amsterdam.
To watch Governor Cuomo watch the water pour into the tunnel and say,"We are just waiting for it to stop." is indicative of a fatalistic attitude. He might have said more truthfully, "Let the waters pour in and subsequently the Federal dollars pour in for we are mere victims of a natural disaster." They knew days ahead of time that this was going to be the highest water ever and they did nothing to protect the infrastructure. If you told him to duck down to not walk into a beam and he refuses, does he now have the right to sue for damages? It basically is the same wasteful mentality. In the Midwest, when they know a town is going to be flooded they start sandbagging. They should have started days ahead to barricade the oncoming waters. Are they really that incompetent? Something smells like politics.
The best science says Humans are causing global warming and they jhave cvirually prdicted these effects. Vested financial Corporate interests have spent OVER $1Billion debunking and disputing it. How much does it take to make a perfectly balanced environment to tip out of balanc? Answer . Not much
Make the ones that caused this and their Republican stooges to pay or you continue to be fooled and you keep paying the price with poisoned water land air recession and wages below the poverty
PAUL HOLZER
I won't go into detail, but google for Glacial and Inter-Glacial periods. IF you understand what you read, come back for a conversation.
I apologize but I just have to ask. Did you just get out of bed or suffering from a hangover? What you wrote might make sense to you, but it's almost painful to decipher.
Yes you can-see Rhode Island's Hurricane Barrier which was built to do just what this article talks about-to protect Providence from massive floods like this. And it works! Providence was not flooded during Sandy. The coast was hit, but not Providence.
Good example of what going green would be like. Instead of temporary energy cut off, this is what the whole country would look like if Gore and other green kooks got their way. Try living without O & G and coal.
Speaking from experience a castrophy is one of those life experiences from which many never recover. A 100 year flood, 2 or 3 really bad tornadoes, a couple of major droughts ring loud in my life as a farmer. Sure you expect the government to arrive to place your life's pieces back together. And even though many efforts are made by those entities and agencies progress is a terribly slow, things that take a huge personal effort just to cope. The scale of all the destruction that disrupts your family, friends, community really doesn't matter as it affects everything meaningful as well as your personal psycology. The truth is you must dig deep to rebuild something that is both painful and expensive and never expect anything more than you can accomplish yourself. About all the authorties can do is be present as your treasured belongings suddenly become "pick over" by individuals seeking to capitalize on your misfortune. Believe me, after the first tornado I experenced, even though a state trooper was less than fifty yards away people were in my residence sacking everything of value. Get used to it the loss will continue even during reconstruction.
You will not be immune from the likes of insurance, clean up crews, or contractors as they will prey on the meat of distruction till only bones remain. Think I kidding?
We must from, time to time, consider the government cannot rescue every situation. it is plain and simple, mother nature can at her whim reduce the efforts of man to survive. And no matter the outcome you will live with the thoughts for your lifetime.
My heart goes out to each and every victim and our family prays for your success.
I thought it was irresponsible to rebuild areas of New Orleans that are below sea level especially when sea level is rising. In Oregon a large percentage of oceanfront property is state park lands for all to enjoy. I am thinking that in the long run that is what should be done along all our coast lines as these waterfront areas get washed out in the future. Stop throwing good money after bad.
If a sea wall is built to keep out rising sea levels how do we get rid of water from storm swollen rivers? It would be necessary to extend the 'sea walls' miles upstream and completely isolate millions of pepple from access to the rivers and estuaries. There goes much of the tourist and recreation industry and the accompanying jobs. Wh wants to look at a sea wall instead of a shoreline. Better to rezone the most flood prone areas to purposes less susceptible to long interval flooding. They should be dedicated to parks, conservation, agriculture and the replacement builings relocated in safer locations. Relocation is a one time expense. Seawalls are an ongoing expense. Places like the Netherlands afford it because they are extremely small and congested and don't have the relocation option. It is like desert countries that depend on desalinated water. If desalination is the only available solution then it is also the cheapest solution. If viable more economic solutions to desalination were available they would certainly take them. New York and the rest of us have better options.
When will man learn that if you want to live on/along the coastlines beaches that you are going to be at risk of having everything wiped out from a storm like Sandy. You cant build enough hurricane ''protective'' barriers of stop the destructive force of a hurricane like Sandy and it was only a category 1 storm. A category 5 storm with the exact same weather pattern setup in effect would have resulted in 1000 times worse destruction. Nothing man can do will stop that kind of destructive force from ever causing that kind of damage or worse.
Shhhhh..... you're using logic and reason. People have a fantasy that they are somehow the surerior entity that will control nature. Never happen. Nature will ALWAYS come up with curve balls we never envisioned possible.
Due to climate change these storms will become more frequent and servere in the coming years. The technology that can protect cities, towns and manmade structures from these disasters is the development of force field vortices that will divert these storms and reduce their destructive force. These storms build energy with time, but if their action can be disrupted and diverted in their beginning stages of formation, they can be defeated. This is not a futuristic concept. This technlogy can be developed in a decade. This same technology can have many beneficial uses.
Pablo-2074778
Do you really believe man can control nature? Granted, man is smart, but our understanding of nature is infinitesimal compared to the infinite nature of the environment that makes up the world.
There just weren't enough people praying for god to suspend nature's laws.
A tall barrier is good, a tall channel delivers extra water to inland, e.g. the drought states, which is also a good idea, and reservoirs connect to one and another with channels, when extra water can be stored up all the way to the inland states. Reservoirs can also purify water with water cleaning plant.
If you build a city next to the ocean you know there are risks, if you choose to live there you accept them. And in the case of Newq Orleans if you build it below sea level not to smart. Getting tired of every time you all get hit by a hurricane we get to pay for it.Move inland to higher ground or quit crying about your losses. True we get a tornado once in a while but we don't have to have Billions to rebuild just so it can happen again some time down the road. Oh I heard something this morning that Utikity crews there to help were sent back because they weren't Union. Well if I ever see a Union person dying of thirst I guess they will die because I won't give the sweat off my NON UNION A!@#
Great point made by Richard Engel. Ten years ago we prioritized national security by launching two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Almost $1 trillion dollars later, we
look at the results and evaluate the ROI of those efforts. Meanwhile, our aging U.S.
infrastructure is in dire need of upgrading and leaves America's economy vulnerable to
increasing business interuption events and increasingly powerful storms. Imagine what we could have done in upgrading our roads, bridges and water and energy infrastructure with $1 trillion dollars. Where is the political leadership? We need to rebalance on priorities for what is deemed "national security."