A hurricane financing expert praised a $56 million plan by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to harden parts of New York City's storm-exposed Staten Island borough through wetlands protection.
"The most effective way to really harden these areas, and we've seen that in Florida and the Caribbean, is through wetlands and the natural process by which sand moves and shifts," said Alan Rubin, a managing director at public policy firm Mercury LLC.
U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and Mayor Bill de Blasio announced the funding package late Monday.
It includes $33 million for the Bluebelt, a stormwater management system for about one-third of Staten Island's land area.
Debris heavily littered such borough wetlands in the wake of Hurricane Sandy.
Specifically, the USDA's award to the city's Department of Environmental Protection will cover 24 Bluebelt acres in Midland Beach, an East Shore neighborhood where many of Staten Island's 23 victims of the Oct. 29, 2012, died.
The city had applied for round two of this funding, created in the Schumer-sponsored Sandy Relief Bill through the Emergency Watershed Protection Program.
Bluebelt drainage systems are being built out on the island's South Shore, in 15 watersheds plus the Richmond Creek watershed, amounting to 10,000 acres overall.
"This Bluebelt provides natural protection against the storm and especially against water surge," said Rubin, nicknamed the hurricane czar for having helped design and underwrite the catastrophe fund in South Florida in 1992, when he worked for Lehman Brothers' investment banking division. Hurricane Andrew that year caused more than $30 billion worth of damage statewide.
Additionally, Schumer and de Blasio announced $17.4 million to buy floodplain easements on nine acres of flood-prone Midland Beach property, and $5.9 million to cover 3.25 acres of floodplain easement purchases on similar property in New Dorp, a neighborhood adjacent to Midland Beach.
"Due to their geography, these communities are always at risk of flooding, even in relatively minor storms," said borough President James Oddo.
According to Rubin, watershed protection is necessary because excessive development close to the water in several New York neighborhoods has disrupted ecosystems.
"The challenge is that they have to maintain the natural development and not allow encroachment by way of development three or four years later," he said.
"It's happening in New Dorp and other places. Look at Jamaica Bay, where they're desperately working to put back wetlands," he said. "This way is better than in the Hamptons, where they just dumped a lot of surplus sand."
The project is part of the city's climate-resiliency plan to resolve long-term stormwater flooding problems. De Blasio in March, two months after taking office, created an Office of Recovery and Resiliency.
"This was very wise on the part of de Blasio and Schumer," Rubin said. "The whole thing is science-based. And it's going through USDA and not the Army Corps of Engineers, which is wonderful. The scientists all work at USDA."
