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Nyc flood zone map12/2/2023 ![]() ![]() The rise of the city’s red-hot real estate market in the latter part of the 1800s, meanwhile, helped to underwrite the idea of New York City as a limitless proposition. Indeed, before massive landfilling operations in the 1800s, Hoboken was an island community, and Jersey City little more than a spit of land connected to the mainland at low tide by a soggy marsh.Īs New York rose to become the nation’s largest city-a position it has retained for some 200 years-it continued to grow at the expense of its surrounding waters. The process of encroaching on the sea, which began at the tip of Manhattan, was then replicated in other places around New York Harbor, including Brooklyn and Queens and, across the Hudson River, in Jersey City and Hoboken. By 2010 such expansion had added 2,286 acres-the equivalent of more than 1,700 football fields of land-to the island. But grants to underwater land, made by the Crown and then the state of New York, expanded the city’s underwater real estate. Back in the 1600s, the lower part of the island ended at what is now Pearl Street, a couple of blocks inland from where it ends today. This move formed the basis for the physical expansion of the island of Manhattan. The Dutch colonists took some of the initial steps to wade out into the water-building a pier, for example-but it was the British who followed them who transformed underwater land into a commodity. New York has a long history of thumbing its nose at the sea. How did the largest city in the United States wind up in this perilous situation? What has been done to address the prospect of climate change and its impact on flooding in the city? And finally, what is the likelihood of tackling these issues during what is being fashioned as a new political era in New York, under a mayor who speaks of a “tale of two cities”? Does Bill de Blasio have any real intention of intelligently confronting the environmental future of New York, much less addressing the stakes involved in climate change for the city’s poor and dispossessed? This means that it is a good time to ask some important questions. And if the highest estimate for sea level rise does indeed hold up, some 800,000 New Yorkers will find themselves living with the real possibility of being swamped. But this is the best data currently at our disposal. It’s true that these are projections and that the maps of the floodplain based on them may not be completely accurate. A panel of climate experts convened by the city reported more grim news last year: its mid-range projection of sea level rise by the 2050s is eleven to twenty-four inches, though the figure could be as high as thirty-one inches. Given the reality of global climate change, there is likely to be even more high water in New York’s future. city, including New Orleans, are living with the prospect of high water encroaching on their lives. More people in New York than in any other U.S. And worse, the new FEMA maps reveal that almost 400,000 New Yorkers are living on the hundred-year floodplain. What it discovered was that the land area at risk of flood was 45 percent larger than what was reflected on the original maps. Then came Hurricane Sandy, and suddenly FEMA decided that it was time to revise the maps. The maps languished and were not updated even though FEMA was aware that it had understated the risk of flooding in the city. Back in 1983, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) mapped the flood risk of New York City and found that thirty-three square miles of the Big Apple fell within the hundred-year floodplain-that is, the area that has a 1 percent risk of a flood in any given year. Consider, for a moment, the risk of flooding in New York. It was easy to forget, that is, until Hurricane Sandy came roaring through in 2012 and the sea returned to its old haunt.įrom a natural hazards perspective, the nation’s largest city is up against some bad numbers. By one account, some 300 square miles of wetland-an area about a quarter of the size of Rhode Island-covered the ground within a twenty-five-mile radius of City Hall in Lower Manhattan. While wandering New York City’s asphalt streets and peering up at its towers of steel and glass, or while driving the parkways and roads that crisscross the metropolitan area, it is easy to forget that, as little as a hundred years ago, the city was situated smack in the middle of tidal wetlands. Lower Manhattan blackout after Hurricane Sandy (Reeve Jolliffe/Flickr) How did the largest city in the United States become the most prone to flooding? Ted Steinberg ▪ Summer 2014 ![]()
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