Archinect - News

The Army Corps of Engineers reveals initial coastal resiliency plan for New York City

2022-10-03T09:00:00-04:00

The federal government wants to build a massive system of storm surge gates and seawalls to protect the New York harbor region from flooding and has put forth a much-delayed plan that would remake coastal areas from upper Manhattan down to Jamaica Bay. The Army Corps estimates construction on the $52 billion project would begin in 2030 and be complete by 2044. The project must be first approved by federal, state and local officials and funded before any of the work can start.

The New York District, North Atlantic Division of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has released a 569-page report outlining a coastal storm risk management feasibility study. According to The City's Samantha Maldonado, a public comment period will be held through January 6th, 2023, as a means to help "inform the design." Maldonado also reported that the government expects plans to be finalized by 2025.

The Army Corps also released an interactive map that details individual aspects of the initial proposal, which Columbia University climate scientist Paul Gallay said will "set the tone for coastal protection and community viability for decades to come."

"We have a lot more room to advocate for environmental justice communities and truly sustainable solutions than many of the other plans would have allowed for," Victoria Sanders, a research analyst at the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance, told the publication. "There is still a long road and a lot of unknowns between now a...

'Let’s prepare, act, and survive': UK urged to invest in every area of floodproofing

2021-10-13T13:21:00-04:00

It is a case of “adapt or die”, said the Environment Agency’s chair, Emma Howard Boyd, warning that deadly events such as the flooding in Germany this summer would hit the UK if the country did not make itself resilient to the more violent weather the climate emergency was bringing.

With some big-name resiliency projects planned in Miami and New York for the next few years, the UK now faces a renewed push to invest in its flood-adverse communities before they suffer irreversible damage due to climate change. Sea walls are still a popular infrastructure solution to the crisis, although some say they don’t necessarily offer the best protection owing to their structural inadequacies and corrosive effects on beaches.

England will need about 3.4 billion extra liters of water per day in the future as it faces incredible supply shortages 20 to 25 years in the future. Prime Minister Boris Johnson called the opportunity to answer the crisis a "coming of age" in his speech to the UN General Assembly last month. The government's response will be in the spotlight soon as Glasgow prepares to host the Cop26 summit next month.

It turns out seawalls might not be the most thought-out way to address sea level rise

2021-07-20T17:08:00-04:00

As the world heats up and sea levels rise, communities in the U.S. could spend more than $400 billion on seawalls to try to hold the ocean back over the next couple of decades. But there’s a catch: Building a seawall in one area can often mean that flooding gets even worse in another neighborhood or city nearby.

A new paper from The Natural Capital Project at Stanford University that examines how seawalls might impact California's Bay Area was published this spring, adding to a slate of similar scholarship surrounding seawalls that have cropped up in recent years. Other efforts have seen a vigorous public pushback where proposed.

Cities like New York and Copenhagen have mulled plans for expensive sea walls that may in the end be inadequate. Some have pointed to the damaging effects on beaches as potential non-starters.

Fast Company has more on the encroaching issue here.

The case for pitting big infrastructure against climate change

2020-01-22T15:26:00-05:00

The US has become terrible at building big things, and negligent in even maintaining our existing infrastructure. [...] That all bodes terribly for our ability to grapple with the coming dangers of climate change, because it is fundamentally an infrastructure problem.

MIT Technology Review senior editor, James Temple, penned an urgent plea for a renewed, but sustainable, American public works boom that could significantly speed up the painfully slow infrastructure planning process in the face of rapidly changing climate conditions.

"To prepare for the climate dangers we now can’t avoid, we’ll also need to bolster coastal protections, reengineer waste and water systems, reinforce our transportation infrastructure, and relocate homes and businesses away from expanding flood and fire zones," Temple writes. "Given those staggering costs and tight time lines, we can’t afford to take decades to build—much less not build—a single project."

Sea walls: Coming soon to an airport near you

2019-10-11T12:00:00-04:00

Concerned that rising waves will flood runways and buildings in the coming years, officials at San Francisco International Airport are moving ahead with a $587 million plan to build a major new sea wall around the entire airport.

Under the proposed plan, The Mercury News reports, a system of concrete walls and steel plate-supported earthen levees will take shape around the airport's 10-mile perimeter. The walls will be designed to guard against a three-foot sea level rise and five-foot storm surge.

SFO is the nation's seventh busiest airport, while its runways sit roughly 10-feet above current sea level.

Jakarta, already 40% below sea level, is building one of the biggest sea walls on Earth

2015-12-14T12:51:00-05:00

Jakarta sinks an average of three inches a year, and parts of the coast are going down as much as 11 inches a year [...] In an attempt to halt the damage, authorities are building a gigantic wall off the coast, measuring 25 miles (40 kilometers) long and 80 feet (24 meters) high, National Geographic reports. To fund the $40 billion and 30-year-long project, the city will also create 17 artificial islands, on which developers can build luxury homes, offices, and shopping malls.

A Dutch firm, KuiperCompagnons, is assisting with design. The first phase of the three-part plan is underway, although critics say that the project will encourage more government corruption and actually cause more environmental damage than it would help prevent.