New Flood-Protection Funds: 'Good Big News' for Lower Manhattan

Rendering of a Battery Park City section of the BIG U, a proposed berm project by Danish architect group Bjarke Ingels Group designed to protect the lower part of Manhattan from flooding. Rendering: Bjarke Ingels Group

Lower Manhattan is getting a $100 million boost in its defense against superstorms of the future.

Mayor Bill de Blasio announced on Thursday that the city is allocating the money toward construction of flood protection around Manhattan’s southern coast, from Montgomery Street on the Lower East Side to the northern end of Battery Park City, at Chambers Street.

The announcement comes following a push by Community Board 1 and elected officials to dedicate storm protection investment in Lower Manhattan. In March the city said it would spend nearly $15 million in city and state funds towards preliminary resiliency designs for Lower Manhattan up to Jay Street in Tribeca. This latest infusion of money will help the city compete for a much bigger pot of federal resiliency funds for Lower Manhattan of up to $500 million, according to de Blasio. The administration has said that park berms, or small hills, and deployable flood walls are among the resiliency measures under consideration.

Next month, the city will issue a request for proposals for final flood protection designs.

“This is good, big news,” CB1 chair Catherine McVay Hughes said in a telephone interview, noting that when Lower Manhattan and its many tunnels and transportation lines are flooded, as they were from Hurricane Sandy, “all of New York and the entire tri-state area are also impacted.”

Whatever measures are taken, however, are still years away, and that is a concern, Hughes added.

“Short term, everyone is on their own,” she said.

Daniel Zarrilli, director of the Mayor’s Office of Recovery and Resiliency, is expected to appear before CB1’s Planning Committee on Sept. 21 to further spell out the city’s plans.