Transcript: Mayor Adams Breaks Ground On Battery Coastal Resilience To Protect Lower Manhattan From Sea Level Rise And Storm Surge, Calls For Regular Federal Funding For[...]

May 6, 2024

Commissioner Rohit Aggarwala, Department of Environmental Protection: Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to a happily thus far dry day here in Battery Park City to announce some big news about further progress on New York City's longstanding and lots still to come work on coastal resilience. With no further ado, let me introduce our leader, the mayor of New York City, Eric Adams.

Mayor Eric Adams: Thanks so much, Rit. And thanks to all of you. This has always been a beautiful space as a police officer assigned to District 2 in the Transit Police. Spent a lot of time walking through this park and just sitting and watching this beautiful waterfront that we have here. But just as the water can bring beauty, it can bring a level of devastation. That is what we must be prepared for.

We have been so abusive to Mother Earth, we now must take corrective action. This falls in line with what this administration is about. Since day one, we have been clear on our mission: revitalize our economy, rebuild it, protect our citizens with public safety and make the city more livable for everyone in general, but specifically for working-class New Yorkers. That includes protecting our city from effects of climate change. It's real. Throughout the two years and four months moving around the city with Rit and his team and how they have used real corrective action and innovation to address the ever-pressing threat of climate change.

No one has forgotten the devastation of Hurricane Sandy 12 years ago. Every day we're at a race against the next superstorm. Even in spite of the superstorms we witnessed for the last few years are real storms and weather pattern changes that have impacted our infrastructure. We have to build a safer, stronger and more sustainable city.

Today, we take another major step forward by breaking ground on the Battery Coastal Resilience Project that I first announced in my State of the City earlier this year. It's a $200 million component of the overall Lower Manhattan Coastal Resiliency Strategy. This is the single largest urban climate adaptation project in the nation, and it will lay groundwork to protect our city's future. The Battery Coastal Resilience Project will rebuild and elevate the current wharf promenade. It will preserve the area's parks - and Sue, I know you're happy to hear that - paths and community spaces. It will protect our memorials and historic monuments and improve ferry services, transit and accessibility. And while protecting our city from rising seas and stronger storms, the project is expected to be completed in 2026 and will protect 100,000 residents, 300,000 jobs and 12,000 businesses across the Lower Manhattan home.

The work we begin here today is more than just a protective infrastructure. I want to thank our team that's here. You can recognize them easily because they have on those cool white hard hats. Thank you for the job that you're doing in this area as workers continue to move forward as time moves in the right direction. The work is a monument to human ingenuity, adaptability and determination, and a clear signal that our city is leading the nation when it comes to sustainability and climate action. It's how we are creating jobs right now, investing billions that would directly protect and benefit our communities and bringing environmental justice into every part of our resiliency efforts.

I want to thank the entire team, those who are standing behind me and those in front of us. New York City Economic Development Corporation, the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, the Mayor's Office of Climate and Environmental Justice. We are not doing this alone. Every mayor has basically talked about this. This is not something that we're doing just this administration. Hats off to the visionary of Mayor Bloomberg and the role that Mayor de Blasio also played. It is the relay as we continue to hand off the baton to make sure that we continue to successfully protect our waterfront and protect our infrastructures.

Today, we're also calling on the federal government to bolster the essential work by creating regular federal funding for this type of infrastructure to help our city complete critical resiliency projects before the next Hurricane Sandy strikes. For every dollar invested in coastal infrastructure, six dollars is saved in recovery costs, not to mention it saves lives and it saves neighborhoods and livelihoods. We also hope our partners in Albany will pass the legislative tools we need to build infrastructure projects more quickly and more efficiently so we can get these projects completed before we need them. We want to be proactive, not just reactive.

The Battery is a historic spot for a legacy of over 400 years. It has survived so much and so much of our history starts at this location and we must do everything possible to make sure we sustain it. But with global water records being smashed every day and up to 23 inches of sea level rise expected by the 2050s and 65 inches of sea level rise by 2100, we must start building the future of New York City now, not just in Lower Manhattan, but every one of our five boroughs. We're going to break ground on even more coastal resiliency projects as we go forward, including barriers in Red Hook, Brooklyn and other neighborhoods that are vulnerable to the effects of climate storms. This is what we call getting stuff done, protecting our city and protecting our infrastructures. Thank you very much.

Commissioner Aggarwala: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Just to add a couple of more details to what the mayor said. First of all, I'm Rit Aggarwala, I'm the commissioner of the Department of Environmental Protection and the city's chief climate officer. Just a few points on this. This is, of course, a city-funded project, $200 million to raise this wharf along the water. It is just one piece of our overall effort, as the mayor said, to protect Lower Manhattan and to protect all of New York City against climate change.

Up on this side - and I'll invite Raju Mann to speak in just a moment - we're connecting and coordinating with the great work that the Battery Park City Authority is doing. They're also groundbreaking today. On the east, it'll be coordinated with what's going on under the leadership of the Economic Development Corporation and the FiDi & Seaport Project. Of course, north of that, we have BMCR, the Brooklyn Bridge-Montgomery Street Project, and then East Side Coast Resilience. All of it forms a comprehensive multibillion dollar effort that's taken us already 12 years. It's got several more years to go.

The good news is that within a couple of years, really within two years, we are going to start seeing the first of these projects complete. What that means is that we've waited for a very long time because these are really difficult projects to plan, to engineer and to get underway. We will have within a couple of years in place the protections that could protect Lower Manhattan. As the mayor said, other parts of the city, because we're not just working on Manhattan, we've got projects that will be delivered in Staten Island and in Queens and in Brooklyn as well that will protect us from sea level rise and from those devastating storms.

It is not the only thing we're doing. This is a really important point. Sea walls are very visible, but in fact, a tremendous amount of the work that has already been done has been done on the building level. NYCHA, for example, at more than 200 buildings, has invested to ensure that the buildings might experience flooding, but they will be able to bounce back from flooding. So people won't lose electricity and elevators and critical systems for days or weeks or months like happened after Hurricane Sandy. They might be inconvenienced for a few hours or a day or two. That's what resilience really means, is the ability to bounce back. New Yorkers should know as we start looking into this coming hurricane season, which the federal government has pointed out is likely to be quite severe, that New York, even though we are not done with these coastal defenses, New York is much better prepared than it was 12 years ago when Hurricane Sandy hit.

I'd also like to highlight the fact that this is actually, as a construction project, pretty significant for us because it is the first major project in New York City to meet and surpass the commitments that we've made as part of the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group Clean Construction Accelerator. What that does is it ensures that construction projects themselves are sustainable. A lot of the material here is being reused on site. We've got special equipment that protects from noise and air pollution, emissions related to construction. And a lot of the material was brought here by water rather than by truck, reducing the overall impact of this construction project on the city and on the environment. It's so important that we make all of those connections, and that's, I think, part of the theme. We've got to connect between large scale resilience and building scale. We've got to connect all of these pieces. We've got to connect resilience and overall sustainability because we can't stop climate change just by keeping the water at bay. We have to ensure that we stop the process of emissions and therefore climate change itself.

Before I turn it over to our next speaker, I just want to thank a couple of folks who are here. Of course, Sue Donoghue, our Parks commissioner. Eric Macfarlane, the chief infrastructure officer. What's your title these days? Deputy, I'm sorry, deputy commissioner at DDC. We've got Allison Landry, our chief infrastructure officer from the Mayor's Office. We've got Elijah Hutchinson, who leads the Mayor's Office of Climate and Environmental Justice. Josh Kraus, you're chief infrastructure officer. Thank you, I got that, from the Economic Development Corporation. Then finally, I just want to highlight Laurian Farrell over here, who really ought to be back here with us. Nonetheless, our new deputy commissioner for the Bureau of Coastal Resilience at the Department of Environmental Protection.

One of Mayor Adams' initiatives and a demonstration of his commitment to taking this work so seriously and advancing it, is that DEP has taken on the role of coordinating the city's coastal resilience efforts. We're standing up a new bureau to lead, drive, and operate that equipment. That will be under Laurian's leadership. I'm really grateful to have you here. And standing next to her is somebody who's really important to this work, Jordan Salinger. Thank you, Jordan, for all of your work at MOCEJ.

Now, as I said, we have to connect to our partners. A key partner… Oh, wait a minute. Our Congressman is here. Excellent. We can't do any of this without connecting with the federal government. The bulk of the $18 billion that the city has been able to invest after Hurricane Sandy has been federal money. In acknowledgment of that, and with an acknowledgment of his leadership on this topic, I'd like to introduce Congressman Dan Goldman.

US Representative Dan Goldman: Thank you, Commissioner Aggarwala. Mayor, thank you very much for having us all here. So good to see so many of the folks in our government who are invested in making sure that Lower Manhattan becomes a purely and completely resilient area so that the city can thrive, can continue to grow, and does not have to worry about another superstorm like Sandy.

The Battery Coastal Resilience Project is critical to maintaining our resiliency down here in The Battery, a critical part of my district, and all along the tip of the island. The entire Lower Manhattan Coastal Resiliency Strategy is absolutely essential. We really do take it all the way up, and there's work going on the east side on resiliency right now. This particular resilience strategy will protect more than 100,000 residents, 300,000 jobs, and 12,000 businesses from flooding due to the projected rising sea levels. I'm very proud to be part of this historic groundbreaking that will ensure that Lower Manhattan remains the central financial hub of the world.

I am also honored to be able to make an additional announcement before we do the groundbreaking. As part of this broad Manhattan Financial District Seaport resilience, I put in, with the cooperation of the city, an application for a flood mitigation grant from the federal appropriations bill for $2 million, which was recently passed. So I'm honored to be here as well to be able to present that award as we break ground on one. Then we will use that money to build the flood infrastructure and resistance that we need for the rest of the tip. Thank you very much for having us.

Mayor Adams: Always like your money.

Commissioner Aggarwala: Thank you, congressman. Next, I'd like to invite our neighbor to the west, the Battery Park City Authority's president and CEO, Raju Mann.

Raju Mann, President and CEO, Battery Park City Authority: Good afternoon, everybody. I want to acknowledge Warrie Price first and Bill Rudin here for a second, because for decades, they've helped to maintain this beautiful park. Thank you for hosting us, Warrie. Thank you, Mr. Mayor, for coming. Good afternoon again, Mr. Mayor.

I want to thank you and your team for focusing on building a more resilient city and driving forward a strategy, the Lower Manhattan Coastal Resiliency Plan, which brings us all together to plug in and do our part to support. I also want to thank Governor Hochul and the board of the Battery Park City Authority, our great Lower Manhattan elected officials. Thank you again for the vision, support and urgency you've lent to this work.

The waters are rising. Major storms are more frequent and intense. Here in Lower Manhattan, we have a front row seat to this future. We also have an opportunity, as the mayor said, to adapt and reinvent our coastline in a way that not only protects New York City, but creates incredible new public spaces along the waterfront. That's what's happening all around us. Steps from here up to the Museum of Jewish Heritage, just to the north and the west, Battery Park City Authority is building a flood-protected waterfront, which will connect to the city's effort down here in The Battery, as the commissioner said. When complete in just over a year from now, the area will include a brand new Wagner Park, a new community space, a great new restaurant space, and a lot of other amenities.

We're also in the process of designing flood protection for another mile of coastline to the north, up to and just past the Borough of Manhattan Community College, which will protect the World Trade Center Site, significant portions of Lower Manhattan, in addition to the over 16,000 people who live in Battery Park City and the over 10,000 people who work there. We have a lot of work to do, but we're very optimistic that with the right collaboration, we can turn the climate crisis into an opportunity to build an even better Lower Manhattan and New York City. Again, I just want to thank the mayor, Commissioner Aggarwala, for your support, and we look forward to continuing this vital work. Thank you.

Commissioner Aggarwala: Thank you, Raju. Actually, I just want to acknowledge, we've been joined by Bill Rudin, and I just want to thank you, Bill, for all of Association for a Better New York's tireless support of the need for New York City to be a leader on climate and to invest in resilience, so thank you. I'd like to introduce Tammy Meltzer, the chair of Manhattan Community Board One.

Tammy Meltzer, Chair, Manhattan Community Board 1: Thank you, and welcome to my neighborhood. Thank you all for joining us. Community Board 1 sits at a unique position. We are a symbol of resiliency because we are the birthplace and the historic start of New York. Look around this amazing park. Look at The Battery. Come visit us. Our people in New York come by the thousands to see us because we are the birthplace and start. You can come from here and go to Ellis Island. You can go to the Statue of Liberty. You can go to World Trade. You can go anywhere in New York on our amazing subway system and ferries.

But to be resilient as a people, we also need a resilient coastline. Since three out of four sides of our community are all water, we feel this intensely. Only through the partnership with the city, the state, and our federal government can we make progress. And resiliency can't only be here. We recognize it has to be throughout the city because we don't want to push one problem to the next neighborhood. Through a holistic vision under the Mayor's Office and leadership, we're really excited to see resiliency go everywhere from Lower Manhattan. We're happy to be the birthplace of it in New York. We hope that we can be a beacon for change throughout the city. Thank you for coming.

Commissioner Aggarwala: Thank you, Tammy. We're going to do a Q&A now? Okay.

Question: Can somebody just talk about, just like paint a picture of what's going to happen here? Are we talking about sort of tearing this up and elevating it? What is it going to look like here once it's finished?

Mayor Adams: Smarter people than I know that answer. Yes, absolutely.

Commissioner Sue Donoghue, Department of Parks and Recreation: Thank you for the question. What we're doing is actually elevating the wharf area because of sea level rise, because of what we know is going to be continuous flooding. We're elevating the wharf, rebuilding the promenade. There will still be the beautiful gardens. There will still be the access and the views for people, but it will be elevated so that we can deal with what we know is coming in the future.

Question: You mentioned this piece will be expected to be effectively completed in 2026. When will the broader, all of these different projects along Lower Manhattan be completed?

Commissioner Aggarwala: We've got several of the pieces are, in fact, scheduled to finish in 2026. The Brooklyn Bridge-Montgomery Street will be finished then. East Side Coastal Resilience will also be finished in 2026. We're going to have a whole stretch that will be done in 2026 and then a couple more pieces that will come into place in 2028.

Question: I was just wondering if we could get some more detail regarding the elevation. How much do we anticipate it will change here?

Commissioner Donoghue: Mike, right behind you. Mike, tell the exact…

Yes, we'll be elevating five feet. We're also rebuilding the ferry stops for the Staten Island Ferry. We'll still be able to function effectively, but five feet.

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