Jun 17, 2014 - smaller floods that washed over Hobokenâ .... The block grants for Hoboken and for other ... Small Business and Entrepreneurship that the.
Eos, Vol. 95, No. 24, 17 June 2014
NEWS Floods, Climate Change, and Urban Resilience: One Policy Maker’s Perspective When Hurricane Sandy battered the U.S. Atlantic Seaboard in October 2012, strong winds generated a storm surge that caused waters from the Hudson River to wash across Hoboken, N.J. Those waters flooded about 80% of the city, population 50,000, that lies across the river from Manhattan. The flooding caused more than $100 million in private property damage and more than $10 million in municipal property damage while impairing the region’s transportation system. “The question everyone has been asking since the storm is, How do we prevent this from happening again? What can be done to avoid the kind of flooding and devastation we faced?” Hoboken mayor Dawn Zimmer said a few months later in her February 2013 state of the city address. Ever since Sandy—and several subsequent smaller floods that washed over Hoboken— Zimmer has worked on and pushed for plans to protect the city in a comprehensive and resilient manner. Those efforts led to a 2 June announcement that Hoboken and the neighboring municipalities of Weehawken and Jersey City, N.J., are the recipients of a $230 million award from Rebuild by Design, a contest created in 2013 by the White House’s Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force.
floods in Hoboken affect health, quality of life, and public safety and that the city is seeing more and more flooding. She said the third National Climate Assessment (NCA), issued by the White House on 6 May, “makes me even more committed than I already am to work to protect Hoboken.” One conclusion from NCA that stands out for her is that over about the past 50 years, the number of heavy rain events has increased by 71% in the northeastern United States. “That means when it rains, it pours. And believe me, we know it,” said Zimmer, who lives in the flood-prone southwest part of Hoboken. “We feel very much in Hoboken like we are on the front lines of climate change, and so now I know from the science that it’s not just anecdotal. It doesn’t feel like it’s raining a lot more; it is raining a lot more.”
Rebuilding by Design in Hoboken Zimmer said that she is “extremely excited” about winning the Rebuild by Design competition “and having what really is a historic
Resiliency and Planning
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Mayor Zimmer spoke one- on- one with Eos on 4 June about Hurricane Sandy, efforts to Fig. 1. Hoboken mayor Dawn Zimmer (left) shows Federal Emerestablish a comprehen- gency Management Agency deputy administrator Richard Serino sive resiliency plan for some of the businesses in the city that were damaged during the city, the potential Hurricane Sandy. impact of climate opportunity for the city of Hoboken to comchange, the role of science in helping policy prehensively protect our city and really be makers better understand and plan for future a model.” flood threats, and how Hoboken’s efforts She explained, “Now having been through could be a nationwide model for urban areas Hurricane Irene [in 2011] and Hurricane dealing with floods. Sandy, I’ve seen first-hand the challenges with Zimmer—who is a member of the White how a lot of our federal policies work and that House’s State, Local, and Tribal Leaders Task there really is not a structure for funding a Force on Climate Preparedness—said that
© 2014. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved.
comprehensive approach, unless you are a community that is lucky enough to have already been studied by the [U.S.] Army Corps of Engineers, unless you are a community that can wait 10 years for them to get down the line and get the funding in order to help you.” The Rebuild by Design plan for Hoboken, Weehawken, and Jersey City calls for protecting those communities from storm surge and rain-based flash flooding by combining engineering and the installation of green infrastructure. The plan is based on four components: resist, delay, store, and discharge flood waters. It was developed by the Dutch firm Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), with strong backing from Zimmer and others. The plan includes deploying hard infrastructure in parts of Hoboken and designing a park on the city’s north end that will double as a levee system for coastal defense. Zimmer noted that the city already owns the land for the park and has completed environmental remediations and the conceptual design for it. She said, “There are things that are in place that are going to enable us to move perhaps on a quicker time frame than other communities might be able to because we already have a lot of the elements in place.” “Delay” encompasses guidelines, policy recommendations, and infrastructure— including bioswale storm water runoff conveyance systems, parkland, and green roofs—to slow rainwater runoff. Zimmer said that the city has developed a green infrastructure master plan and that people who install elements such as green roofs, rain barrels, and porous pavers are “part of the total solution to protect Hoboken.” The city’s surface is estimated to be 94% impermeable. Floodwater storage incorporates plans for cistern, bioretention basin, and constructed wetland elements. The “discharge” part of the OMA plan includes a stormwater pump and storm drain. The winning Rebuild by Design proposals for Hoboken and its neighbors and for other regions “are truly transformative and serve as blueprints for how we can safeguard the region and make it more environmentally and economically resilient,” stated federal Housing and Urban Development (HUD) secretary Shaun Donovan, chair of the Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force, in announcing the disaster recovery community development block grants. “It’s my hope that Rebuild by Design will inspire other public-private partnerships to spur innovation and resilience in other parts of the country and around the world. By investing in these proposals, we are going to ensure that when the next storm comes, the region will be safer and better prepared.” The block grants for Hoboken and for other flood protection projects in New Jersey and New York totaled $920 million. According to HUD, the funds for Hoboken, Weehawken, and Jersey City will support the first phase of the OMA proposal. The agency noted that the
Eos, Vol. 95, No. 24, 17 June 2014
National Flood Insurance Program Another aspect of making Hoboken resilient in the face of potential future floods is reforming the National Flood Insurance Program, the mayor said. On 13 December, she testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship that the program “is not designed to meet the needs of the built urban environment.” The program treats garden- style businesses as if they were basements and restricts their insurance coverage, she testified. Zimmer told Eos that she thinks Hoboken could become a model for an alternative approach to the flood insurance program. Instead of people paying into such an insurance program, she foresees a resiliency district where people pay to help with the cost of infrastructure and its maintenance. “The unfairness of the system for cities like ours, I think, is going to spur interest in our residents to seize this opportunity and figure out if we can become a resiliency district,” Zimmer said, noting that there is support at the federal level for trying this approach.
Role of Science in Helping Policy Makers Zimmer said she is concerned about the potential impact of climate change on future flooding in Hoboken and elsewhere. She told Eos that communities should look at the recent National Climate Assessment, familiarize themselves with the projections for their area, and try to begin a planning process if they have not done so already. “It’s important for communities to be thinking about ‘how can I be proactive, what are the risks that my community faces?’ and really trying to think about being proactive in looking for grant money or putting money into your own budget to begin that planning process if you don’t already have a master plan on how you would protect your community,” she said. “Science has played a role in helping us to look at what are the challenges that we are going to face in the future, and—looking at the climate change assessment report— understanding these heavy downpours. This is not going to stop. It’s only going to get worse,” Zimmer said, adding that the threat of climate change “drives me to move as expeditiously as I can to get this [flood plan] done. I think it’s going to play a role in helping us to get buy-in and build consensus to get things completed.” The mayor said that scientists play a key role in helping policy makers and the public “understand what the risks are in the future. And that, in turn, helps us understand how should our planning and design be done so that we are truly protecting” the community. Zimmer added that it would be helpful for there to be better monitoring systems and sensors for Hoboken and other communities to put in place to better forecast storms and the need for flood preparations. The mayor added that scientists and economists should get together “and make it clear how much money we are talking about. If we need to turn the ship, we need to adapt and we need to mitigate the impact of climate change as much as we can so we can have a little more time to adapt. And I think we need to start putting together the science and the numbers.” Zimmer added, “It shouldn’t be that we are debating are the scientists right. It should be we are saying, how are we going to
© 2014. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved.
City of Hoboken
funding is intended to spur additional public and private investment—through a flood development corporation or resiliency district model—by reducing flood risk and driving down insurance premiums. Zimmer told Eos that the Rebuild by Design funding is “a tremendous opportunity” for Hoboken and neighboring jurisdictions to protect their communities. “Especially in an urban area, where we can’t possibly raise our homes up on pilings, we need to take a different approach. Our plan could be a demonstration of how cities can live with water, and that’s what we’re talking about,” the mayor said. She elaborated that while the community loves and values the Hudson River, “it’s also something that is a concern for us as well, having the Hudson River literally come in on us. We became an island during Sandy. So we need to figure out how to live with the water.” Zimmer said the next steps to protect Hoboken include completing a flood master plan and working to implement the Rebuild by Design winning proposal that is a key part of the overall plan.
Fig. 2. Hoboken, N.J., mayor Dawn Zimmer. be as cost- effective as possible. Because the way we are doing [it] right now, just rebuilding [after floods] as is, is not cost- effective.”
A Difficult Task Zimmer’s push for flood protection and a comprehensive flood resiliency plan for Hoboken has been a difficult task at times, and has included a well-publicized feud with New Jersey Governor Chris Christie about whether his administration held back from the city some funds meant for restoration after Hurricane Sandy. Zimmer acknowledged that politics, particularly in New Jersey’s Hudson County, “is kind of like a full contact sport.” However, she expressed her determination to push forward with the flood planning. “When I think about the future of Hoboken, I recognize that if we don’t get this done, this city is in trouble,” she told Eos. “I’m trying to protect Hoboken for the future, and I feel like this is the most important thing for our city.” Zimmer added, “I’m not going to let anyone stop me from trying to protect my community.” As mayor of a city that, according to Zimmer, needs to learn to live with water—and sometimes an excess amount of it from floods—she provided an apt image of her perseverance to protect Hoboken. “I actually sometimes envision water flowing over my shoulders,” she said. “I mean, you just keep swimming to your goal.” For more information, see the Rebuild by Design plan at http://www.rebuildbydesign .org/project/oma-final-proposal/. —R ANDY SHOWSTACK, Staff Writer
