BPCA Tests a New Kind of Waterfront, One that Creates Habitat
Fifty years ago, the waterfront edge of the 92 acres of newly created land between West Street and the Hudson River was built as a sheer wall of inhospitable, vertical concrete. Today, as the Battery Park City Authority (BPCA) reconstructs the shoreline from Pier A to Chambers Street, aiming to protect the community (and Lower Manhattan beyond it) from flooding and sea level rise, the agency is embracing a new kind of riverside infrastructure that, in places, actually creates marine habitats.
At the recently opened Pier A inlet, Hudson River swells splash into new tidal pools. Parts of the seawall and supporting piles have been covered with rough surfaces meant to attract marine organisms and mollusks. Textured concrete has replaced sheer slabs. Visitors may walk out onto a new platform built over the water.
Tiered levels at the inlet’s edge start below the water’s surface with riprap (boulders), with tidal pools built atop this base. Above the riprap and tidal pools, terraced concrete is filled with soil for marsh grasses.
Sarah Fisher Curtin, BPCA director of sustainability, and her team are looking forward to a monitoring program that will begin this fall at the inlet. Consultants will measure dissolved oxygen in the water, along with temperature, salinity, and turbidity. Several times a week, they’ll check crab, minnow, and box traps and record the species inside. The Billion Oyster Project, an environmental nonprofit that is restoring oyster reefs to New York City’s harbor and waterways, will also be checking oyster cages in the Pier A inlet.
Information about water quality and biodiversity will be conveyed to regulatory agencies and environmental organizations, and shared with the public. Farther north along the seawall, as construction on the BPCA’s North-West Resilience project progresses, similar ecologically beneficial infrastructure is planned for parts of the waterfront.
But even before monitoring at Pier A has begun, Ms. Fisher Curtin said that hydrodynamics are stronger than original modeling suggested. The first planting of marsh grasses in the terraces has already been washed away. On a walk last week, looking down at the constant sprays and splashing in the inlet, she reflected on climate change and said that the team is reevaluating what plant life can survive here.
On April 22, Ms. Fisher Curtin hosted a panel discussion about resilience work at Wagner Park, and several panelists mentioned new research showing that worldwide sea level rise estimates are now considered to be too low. “We’re trying to understand how to work with sea level rise,” said Ruth Nervig, a partner at the landscape architecture firm SiteWorks, who worked on the design of the Pier A inlet, “and still push the boundaries of what we can do with a soft landscape.”