'This Horrible Wall.' Advocates Push for Rethinking Possible Flood Barrier Plan.

Conceptual rendering of a flood wall at Christopher Street along the Hudson River Park Esplanade. When needed, a deployable gate would close the opening. A U.S. Army Corps of Engineers official estimated that the height of the wall would be 8-to10 feet. Rendering: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers  

We need to work together. 

That’s the message from concerned community advocates to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ “preferred” plan for storm-protecting a long stretch of Manhattan’s West Side, including Tribeca. 

The Army Corps proposes to buttress the island from the north end of Battery Park City to West 34th Street with measures that rely largely on what it is calling “large” and “extra large” flood walls—10-to-12 feet—along the esplanade of Hudson River Park. That plan, yet to be finalized, has sparked alarm among three West Side community boards, including Lower Manhattan’s Community Board 1. 

In response to the plan, CB1 last month issued a detailed resolution calling on Gov. Kathy Hochul, Mayor Eric Adams and the Army Corps to convene a West Side Resiliency Task Force of “representatives, experts and stakeholders from all levels of government” that would respond to the Army Corps’ plans and consider alternatives. The request echoes a letter sent to Hochul and Adams by the Hudson River Park Advisory Council, signed by the chairs of the three boards. (The Army Corps’ proposed flood protection measures are being opposed [1] by groups in other regions of the city, as well.)

A March 16 town hall [2] on Lower Manhattan coastal resiliency projects [3], convened by Rep. Dan Goldman and Community Board 1, brought together a number of those agency stakeholders. “We all agree we have to have resiliency but we have to make sure that we’re not sacrificing everything that is valued by the community in favor of resiliency,” Goldman said. “I’m sure the Corps is going to work closely with all of us, and I and my office will be there to make sure of that.”

At that meeting, Karen Bauman, an Army Corps official, said her agency is now focused solely on coastal storm management. Thinking about how to mitigate the local impacts of those measures will come sometime later.

“There are so many opportunities to sit down with the different communities and have workshops for the particular areas, so that will be forthcoming,” she said. “But it is not this current moment.” 

The Army Corps is faced with the extraordinarily complex challenge of devising measures that protect a large swath of coastal New York and New Jersey. Its rough conceptual designs for the region, a result of the New York/New Jersey Harbor Tributaries Study [4], were chosen from among five alternatives, ranging from mostly off-shore, in-water structures to solely shore-based measures, with hybrid combinations in between. Last December, Army Corps official Brice Wisemiller told CB1’s Environmental Protection Committee [5]that the preferred option for Manhattan’s West Side has “the greatest net benefit. Bang for the buck, if you will.” The alternatives, he noted, were seen as too costly, would take too long to construct, or could cause “adverse impacts” to unprotected areas.

Critics of the plan for Manhattan’s West Side say that more thought needs to be given to the impact of those measures on nearby neighborhoods and waterfront parks. “We need to be on that case or we’re going to end up with this horrible wall, walling off the bikeway and preventing the expansion of Hudson River Park and any other thing there,” CB1 Environmental Committee member Laura Starr, a landscape architect, said at the committee’s meeting last month. 

“It’s not easy to integrate a wall that high into the urban design on the West Side,” she added. “There’s just not a lot of space there.”

But barriers in the water have their own drawbacks, board member Bob Schneck pointed out. Along with the added expense and potential ecological impact, “dealing with 90 feet of depth and tremendous numbers of billions of gallons of water moving, and tons and tons of sludge per hour is just an impossible thing,” he said.

“Any solution has downsides,” noted committee member Jeff Galloway. “These are tough choices to be made.”

The barrier system is estimated to cost $52.7 billion. Congress must approve the 65% portion shared by the federal government, with New York City, New York State and New Jersey coming up with the remaining funds.

The Army Corps will choose its final plan in July and then spend the next two years working on a report to be presented to Congress for potential funding approval. Only then, Wisemiller of the Army Corps told Community Board 1, can the actual design of the project begin. Construction would start in 2030, with what he called a “highly idealized” completion date of 2044.

The public has until March 31 to comment on the plans. (Comments can be sent to NYNJHarbor.TribStudy@usace.army.mil [6].)