Ten years after Hurricane Sandy swept up the East Coast, significant coastal resilience infrastructure projects are underway around New York Harbor, including the East Side Coastal Resiliency Project, South Battery Park City Resiliency Project, Red Hook Coastal Resiliency Project, and Living Breakwaters off the coast of Staten Island. Even so, as stakeholders aboard the Waterfront Alliance’s October 26 Sandy Boat Tour emphasized, all too many neighborhoods remain vulnerable to storm surge and sea level rise.
The boat tour, which occurred in partnership with New York Cruise Lines and the Rise to Resilience Coalition, visited Hoboken (New Jersey), South Street Seaport, the North Shore of Staten Island, and Red Hook (Brooklyn). At each stop, community representatives and elected officials boarded the boat and addressed the passengers, describing that neighborhood’s experiences during and after the storm ten years ago, and their situations now. Between stops, as the boat crisscrossed the Hudson River, East River, and New York Harbor, speakers were called to the microphone by host Tyler Taba, Waterfront Alliance senior manager for climate policy.
Mr. Taba was appreciative of participants’ thoughts and stories. “We heard from representatives from community organizations, volunteer organizations, grassroots organizations, city and state agencies, the working waterfront and ports, disaster preparedness. We heard from elected officials, public housing leaders, and environmental advocates. Hearing stories about everyone’s own experiences with Sandy, from Hoboken to Rockaway, was moving. It’s so clear that this storm left its mark on all of us,” he said later.
Congresswoman Nicole Malliotakis, U.S House of Representatives, and Waterfront Alliance President and CEO Cortney Koenig Worrall during the Hurricane Sandy 10 Year Anniversary Boat Tour on October 26, 2022.
One of the broad themes of the tour was the necessity of social resilience, a goal just as important as resilient physical infrastructure. “It is our responsibility to be building the social infrastructure at the same time that we’re building the physical infrastructure,” Amy Chester, managing director of Rebuild By Design, told the crowd.
Capt. Jonathan Boulware, president and CEO of the South Street Seaport Museum, was one of many who referred to the importance of resilience resources being distributed fairly, and of the need to correct environmental justice wrongs of many decades. “Sea level rise is not an equitable threat,” he noted.
A crowd listens as to Kelly Villar, CEO of the Staten Island Urban Center, as she talks about the impacts of Hurricane Sandy on Staten Island in front of The Seaport on October 26, 2022, for the Hurricane Sandy 10 Year Anniversary Boat Tour.
Many activists and organizers from historically disenfranchised communities were aboard the Sandy Boat Tour, including Frank Avila-Goldman from the Lower East Side East River Residents Committee; Aixa Torres, president of the Alfred E. Morris Resident Association; Ayo Harrington, co-chair of LES Ready!; Karen Blondel, founder and executive director of the Public Housing Civic Association; Kelly Vilar, founder and CEO of the Staten Island Urban Center; and Georganna Deas, administrative director of the Coney Island Beautification Project.
As the boat pulled away from Staten Island and headed to Red Hook, Ms. Vilar took the microphone. “We need to look at what we’re building and why we’re building it—and we need to start development with an ecologist, not with a realtor,” she said, to applause. “There aren’t enough people in our borough fighting for resiliency or adaptation. We are at the baby stages on Staten Island of organizing around environmental justice, around our waterfront. There are so many things we need to lift our voice about. We need to find elected officials that are going to fight for us, that even believe in climate change.”
During the Hurricane Sandy 10 Year Anniversary Boat Tour, Mike Stamatis, President and CEO of Red Hook Terminals and Waterfront Alliance board member, reminisces about the day Hurricane Sandy hit New York and New Jersey on October 29, 2012, and the profound impact it had on our region for years to come.
A few minutes later, Mike Stamatis, president and CEO of the Red Hook Terminals, spoke warmly of his relationships with neighborhood activists, and of the need for far more investment in resilience. “We’re still in the same position that we were ten years ago,” he told the group as the boat idled near the great terminal cranes in Brooklyn’s Atlantic Basin. “If there is another Sandy, God forbid, nothing has been done. The same thing would happen. I’ve seen minor things done in the community for flood protection, but nowhere near what needs to happen. I’ve seen plans to make major investments for flood protection—but it’s all happening too slow and it may not be here in time.”
“But at the end of the day, no matter what happens,” he said, “we’ll still be here. I know this community will pull together.”
“We are better off in many ways, but this is also a moment to take stock of the work we still have to do. and boy, is there a lot to do,” Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine told the group. “We are vulnerable. This is not a hypothetical ten years after Sandy. This is not a hypothetical one year after Ida. We have to do much more. We have structural barriers to change in New York City that make even the most critically necessary projects difficult to execute.”
“The reality is that there is no single solution for climate change,” Mr. Taba said later. “We are going to need to think creatively about what the future of our waterfront looks like. It’s an opportunity to be innovative and rewrite so many of the wrongs that exist along our waterfront. It’s going to take all of us.”
