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Last fall, when Hurricane Irene gave the city a glancing blow,Bowman stationed himself there at a flood gauge. "I was watchingthe sea level, and it came within an inch and a half of what it wasin '92." The damage of a major flood could extend far beyond subwaypassengers because much of the city's electrical power lines andcommunications systems is buried in or near the same tunnels.Bowman and other engineers who have studied the problem think it'stime for the city to consider building storm surge barriers,adjustable floodgates in the harbor that can let shipping throughbut are able to close to slow or block a storm surge. The Netherlands and England have built their barriers. Italians arebuilding one to protect Venice, and the Russians are completing asystem that would protect St. Petersburg. Estimates for building abarrier or network of barriers to protect New York City and itssurroundings begin at about $10 billion. Bowman, a past member of Bloomberg's committee focused on climatechange, said that, so far, city officials have resisted the idea."It was clear they didn't really want to go there," he said. "Idon't know why; too expensive, too ambitious, I guess." According to Adam Freed, deputy director of New York's Long-TermPlanning and Sustainability Office, Bloomberg has committed tocompleting 132 initiatives in his climate plan before he leavesoffice next year. So far, building storm surge barriers is notamong them. Strategies still under study However, Freed noted that David Bragdon, who heads the long-termplanning office, told the City Council in December, "We areevaluating a wide variety of coastal protection strategies, fromwave attenuators and soft edges to storm surge barriers." Bragdonadded, "We are not presupposing the outcomes of this or otherstudies under way." Last week, Caswell Holloway, New York's deputy mayor foroperations, said the city was preparing to invest more than $1billion in projects that promote "climate resilience." Some of thestrategies that Bragdon and Holloway have discussed come from teamsof architects who presented an exhibit in 2010 at the city's Museumof Modern Art on how they would redesign New York's harbor to copewith rising sea levels. They recommended using "soft infrastructure," includingconstructing a network of tidal wetlands, salt marshes and anirregular, parklike coastline with "fingers" of land extending intothe sea that would "attenuate" or take some of the power out ofstorm-driven waves. "The mayor's office has done wonderful things in terms of fundingstudies, but we haven't come to real engineering solutions," saidKlaus Jacob, a geophysicist and environmental disaster expert atColumbia University. He wrote the portion of the New York stateclimate change plan that described in detail how flooding couldknock out the city's rapid transit systems. The state plan envisions a 100-year storm hitting the city. Itestimates that 1 billion gallons of seawater might have to bepumped from subway and train tunnels. Because salt water iscorrosive, repairing or replacing subway equipment once the waterleaves could take months before the system is restored. The state plan suggests some short-term fixes, such as elevatingstreet-level subway entrances and rebuilding collapsed flood wallsat subway rail yards. It proposes medium-term measures that wouldbegin over the next 30 years. They would include building"estuary-wide storm barriers" with floodgates that could close andprotect the city from the engineers' nightmare scenario, which is astorm surge riding into the city on top of a high tide. Then there are long-term strategies including "retreat options," orplans to evacuate parts of the city being reclaimed by a risingsea. Storm surge barriers and the 'Katrina effect' The study says because of the potential of billions of dollars indamage, the city might find it cost-effective to begin spending nowfor protective measures, including the surge barriers, startingwith "hundreds of millions of dollars" per year. Jacob proposes a carbon tax to help finance a barrier system, buthe regards it as an "interim solution," because although the surgebarriers might be built within 30 years, scientists expect sealevels to continue rising long after that, driven by meltingglaciers and the expansion of warming water. We are high quality suppliers, our products such as USB Ionizer , Car Air Purifier Ionizer for oversee buyer. To know more, please visits Portable Travel Humidifier.
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