City considers ways to combat storm damage

Two years before Hurricane Irene created the prospect of a flooding nightmare in New York City, 100 scientists and engineers met to sketch out a bold defense: massive, movable barriers to shield the city from a storm-stirred sea.

Though the storm caused billions of dollars in damage along the Eastern Seaboard, Irene proved not to be the urban catastrophe forecasters feared. But in the wake of the close call a year ago, elected officials and community groups are pressing for an evaluation of whether sea barriers make sense for New York.

The city has been gathering information, while stressing that barriers are just one of many ideas being studied.

Initially hesitant to recommend spending money studying a remote possibility, Assemb. Richard Gottfried (D-Manhattan) now finds the barrier idea realistic enough that he and State Sen. Thomas Duane (D-Manhattan) have urged the city to give it a thorough examination. Gottfried changed his mind before Irene, but feels the storm -- which hit the city head-on as a tropical storm on Aug. 28, 2011 -- brought the point home to others.

"I think it did make it clear to a lot of New Yorkers that we could not take our safety for granted," he said this week.

To advocates, Irene -- which shuttered subways, spurred evacuation orders for 370,000 people and raised fears that a surge of seawater would cripple the U.S. financial capital -- added urgency to what they see as the best hope for protecting New York against a mounting threat.

But some experts believe the city is better off focusing on more moderate, immediate measures to limit potential damage from storms and rising seas.

The discussion illuminates a potential dividing line for this city and others projected to face a more flood-prone future in a changing climate: take big, difficult steps in hopes of thwarting high water, or a roster of smaller ones intended to help manage it?

New York, for its part, says it's giving equal time to both approaches.

The city administration is working toward a hard-numbers analysis of natural risks and how well various coast-protection techniques would address them, said Adam Freed, the deputy director of Mayor Michael Bloomberg's Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability. Storm-surge barriers are among the options being examined; officials have talked in recent months with some participants in a 2009 academic conference on the issue.