Feds Want to Defund Seaport Flood Protection and City Weighs Response

Hurricane Sandy caused massive damage in the Seaport in 2011, including this felled tree in Titanic Memorial Park on Fulton Street. Photo: Carl Glassman/Tribeca Trib

The city is weighing its response to the Trump administration’s intent to withdraw federal funding from a planned flood protection project for the Seaport as well as other vulnerable areas citywide.

Earlier this month, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) announced it was ending a program that supports flood mitigation initiatives nationally, including $42 million towards the $228.8 million Seaport Coastal Resilience [1] project. (The city funds the rest.) The Seaport project, now in design, is meant to protect the neighborhoods along the East River waterfront from the Brooklyn Bridge to John Street. To guard against catastrophic damage from tidal flooding and sea level rise predicted by the year 2100, the affected waterfront would be raised to 11 feet above sea level, and other infrastructure installed.

The federal funds come from the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities [2] (BRIC) program, which FEMA called in a statement “wasteful and ineffective” and “more concerned with political agendas than helping Americans affected by natural disasters.”

The agency said all BRIC applications going back to 2020 have been cancelled and undistributed funds must be returned.

“I’ll just say it’s deeply problematic and the Law Department is evaluating any potential impacts to public safety,” Jordan Salinger, deputy director of the Mayor’s Office of Environmental Justice, told Community Board 1’s Environmental Protection Committee on Monday. “We are figuring it out,” he added. “I would just say, personally, as someone who worked on a lot of these projects, it’s painful. But we’ll find a way.”

Salinger said the announcement, made public in an April 4 press release, came to the administration by way of “a kind of internal memo that was spread around” but there have been “no direct conversations” with FEMA. “I think there’s been kind of off the record conversations with FEMA but nothing to pause work on X project, or we’re taking [it] away.” He said it is unclear if an additional $8 million in FEMA funding for the current design phase is also at risk. 

The $42 million figure for construction is part of more than $300 million in promised federal money for city resiliency projects that now may disappear, Salinger said.

Salinger said he does not know if a court challenge over the withdrawn funds would cause a pause in construction. “Certainly we’ve seen that in other federal attempts to claw back money,” he said. “It’s about making the process more difficult, so I think that would have to be part of the evaluation.”

Rise to Resilience [3], a coalition of 110 organizations convened by the Waterfront Alliance, is calling on the state and city to take legal action against a funding halt. “BRIC has funded tangible protection to millions of residents across the nation who have lived through devastating floods, wildfires, tornadoes, and other climate impacts,” Tyler Taba, the Waterfront Alliance director of resilience, said in a statement. “Characterizing the BRIC program as anything but successful is indolent and dishonest.”

Construction of the Seaport Coastal Resilience is planned to begin early next year and be completed in 2029. It is separate from the more complex FiDi and Seaport Climate Master Plan [4], which has a broader geographic focus and a higher level of storm surge protection through 2100. The city is now in various stages of project planning or construction for flood protection from Montgomery Street on Manhattan’s east side to Battery Park City on the west. Battery Park City’s Coastal Resilience Projects are paid for through Battery Park City Authority-issued bonds.

Sea levels are projected to rise 6.3 feet by 2100, with the Seaport neighborhood experiencing regular monthly flooding by the 2050s and daily flooding by the 2080s.