The New York City Mayor, Bill de Blasio, has released findings of a study that determined the city’s comprehensive strategy for the Lower Manhattan Coastal Resiliency (LMCR) project.
The study evaluated dozens of adaptation measures and identified a set of strategies to build resilience in Lower Manhattan.
The recommendations include developing a plan to extend the Manhattan shoreline into the East River to protect the low-lying and highly constrained Seaport and Financial District area.
In addition, the city will advance $500 million for four capital projects to reinforce Lower Manhattan’s coastal areas and provide interim flood protections for the Seaport, parts of the Financial District and Two Bridges neighborhoods, to begin construction between 2019 and 2021.
“Hurricane Sandy showed us how vulnerable areas like Lower Manhattan are to climate change,” said Mayor de Blasio . “That’s why we not only have to reduce emissions to prevent the most cataclysmic potential effects of global warming, we have to prepare for the ones that are already inevitable. Our actions will protect Lower Manhattan into the next century. We need the federal government to stand behind cities like New York to meet this crisis head on.”
Since Hurricane Sandy, the city has worked to assess the impacts and risks of climate change and analyze coastal protection options along the 3.3 miles of shoreline comprising Lower Manhattan.
The Resilience Study projects that by the 2050s, 37 percent of properties in Lower Manhattan will be at risk from storm surge.
By 2100, with over 6 feet of projected sea level rise, almost 50 percent of properties will be at risk from surge, and 20 percent of Lower Manhattan streets will be exposed to daily tidal inundation, according to an official NYC announcement.