New Federal Law Addresses a Wider Range of Flooding Threats
President Joe Biden on January 4 signed the Water Resources Development Act (WRDA) of 2024. The measure authorizes $10.7 billion in funding for 21 water-related projects around the country, $60 million of which will be dedicated to environmental infrastructure improvements on the Lower Manhattan waterfront.
The $60 million allocation goes to the New York-New Jersey Harbor and Tributaries Focus Area Feasibility Study (HATS) now being developed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which aims to formulate a plan to mitigate flooding from extreme-weather events and rising sea levels in New York Harbor and all of its waterways. Passage of this bill was pushed, in part, by Congressman Dan Goldman, who represents the Lower Manhattan community.
Implementation of the HATS plan when completed is likely to cost more than $50 billion, so the $60-million earmark contained in the new legislation is effectively a downpayment on its full cost, set aside to “improve water and wastewater management, including stormwater management such as combined sewer overflows.”
A spokesman for Congressman Goldman notes, “WRDA gives the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers the authority to carry out water development projects and studies, among other things. Allowing the Army Corps of Engineers to spend the money is the first step in the process. Congress would still need to provide funding for the Corps to carry out the environmental infrastructure projects in the upcoming appropriations process.”
Potentially more significant than the amount of current funding (or its declared purpose), however, is language that Mr. Goldman insisted be included in the text of the bill. These clauses require that the Army Corps refocus the HATS plan to address a broad range “of flooding threats facing New York City including tidal and river flooding, heavy rainfall, groundwater emergence, erosion, and sea-level rise.”
This marks a major policy shift, because the HATS plan had previously emphasized only the flooding risk associated with major storms, and did not directly address other sources of inundation, such as those related to rising waters. The implications of this new approach are significant. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the federal agency responsible for study of oceans, major waterways, and the atmosphere, projects that by 2030, the level of Mean Higher High Water – defined as the average level of the highest tide for each day – in the harbor and rivers surrounding the southern tip of Manhattan on a sunny day will be between eight and nine inches higher than today. A decade later, those tides will lap at Lower Manhattan’s shores 11 to 13 inches higher than now.
A spokesman for Congressman Goldman elaborates, “the bill also specifies that [the Army Corps] must include in their plan recommendations relating to projects and activities that maximize the net ecological and societal benefits to neighboring communities.” This caveat may empower the Army Corps to consider options other than the controversial HATS plan for a 12-foot-high seawall running through Hudson River Park, wedged between the bikeway and the pedestrian promenade. That preliminary plan called for the structure to begin in Tribeca (where it would link to the Battery Park City Authority’s North/West Resiliency plan) and continue uptown at least as far as West 34th Street.
“As extreme-weather events continue to threaten the stability and safety of coastal communities, it remains the federal government’s moral imperative to ensure our communities’ protection,” Congressman Goldman said. “This legislation will ensure that New Yorkers are protected from the multitude of flooding hazards that threaten our City.”
The enactment of the WRDA gives the force of law to a September 2023 appeal to the Army Corps by Congressman Goldman (joined by the State’s Department of Environmental Conservation), which argued that the HATS plan “address[ed] flood risk insufficiently” as a result of focusing primarily on extreme-weather events. They also noted the legal requirement that such a plan “protect New York and New Jersey against multiple varieties of flooding.” The same coalition of elected and appointed officials noted the statuary requirement that the Army Corp prioritize “natural and nature-based features and nonstructural approaches over barriers.”
Also included in the WRDA signed into law by President Biden earlier this month is an allocation of $100 million for similar projects in Brooklyn, and $1.78 billion for a coastal storm management project on the South Shore of Staten Island.