Plan Envy – New Jersey Has Nothing Like New York’s Climate “Resilience” Plan

Posted on February 17, 2014 by Bill Wolfe

New York’s Plan Dwarfs Gov. Christie’s Lame Effort

Gov. Christie’s New Jersey is a State of Denial

Will HUD Accept NJ’s Deficient Plan?

In preparing for Friday’s final public hearing on Gov. Christie $1.46 Billion second round Sandy Recovery spending plan, I thought I’d compare NJ’s efforts to our neighbors across the Hudson in New York.

Oh my, what a difference a State makes – NJ has nothing like it!

New York’s plan is based upon NY City’s Plan: A Stronger, More Resilient New York.

Comparisons of the NY and NJ plans are quite revealing – and frankly, should make NJ residents ashamed and mad as hell that their Governor is either grossly incompetent or in denial about developing a real plan to address NJ’s high vulnerability to climate change, extreme weather, and sea level rise.

There is no vulnerability assessment in NJ’s “plan”; there is no acknowledgment of deficiencies in current efforts; climate change is not even mentioned at all; and there are perhaps 200 words to describe future efforts to address sea level rise. The Christie plan was developed behind closed doors and with the involvement of hand picked “by invitation only” “Stakeholders” (critics need not apply and are subject to State Police escort out of the DEP building).

In contrast, New York’s plan goes into great detail, is very honest on admitting vulnerabilities and deficiencies in current State and local programs, lays out and makes binding commitments to a host of significant initiatives, and was developed by a robust public education and participation effort.

Of course, New York produced a quality document while NJ’s efforts are vastly inferior in comparison.

Check out this NY admission – could you imagine Gov. Christie or DEP saying this to the real estate interests and residents on the Jersey shore?? No way! It might limit new development and increase their insurance bills! New York admits:

Overall, the story told by the PWMs [updated FEMA maps] is unsurprising but nonetheless troubling. The new 100-year floodplain, roughly corresponding to the areas flooded during Sandy, is larger than indicated on the 1983 maps by about 15 square miles, or 45 percent. The new floodplain includes larger portions of all five boroughs with significant expansion in Brooklyn and Queens. Citywide, there are now 67,700 buildings in the floodplain (an increase of 90 percent over the 1983 FIRMs) encompassing over 534 million square feet of floor area (up 42 percent). The number of residential units in the floodplain has increased to 196,700 (a jump of over 61 percent), with the majority of those residences in Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Queens. Almost 400,000 New Yorkers now live in the floodplain (up 83 percent)—more living in the floodplain than in any other American city.

I strongly suggest you read the entire New York Plan, but will provide just a taste in this excerpt on current and future vulnerabilities and the urgency to address risks from climate change: (* apologies for breaks in the excerpt below – it is verbatim and a result of column format of the  NY Plan).

Although New York clearly is at risk today, long-term changes in climate will make many extreme events and chronic conditions worse. These changes have, in fact, been underway for some time. As noted earlier, over the last century, sea levels around New York City have risen by more than a foot. Temperatures, too, are climbing. In fact, the National Weather Service and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) labeled 2012 the warmest year on record in New York City and in the contiguous United States, with average temperatures in the US 3.2 degrees Fahrenheit above normal and a full degree higher than the previous warmest year ever recorded.

Globally, all signs indicate that these changes will accelerate. Atmospheric concentrations of heat-trapping carbon dioxide have reached levels that have not been seen on earth for millions of years. Since the onset of the industrial revolution, combustion of fossil fuels and land use changes have led to a roughly 40 percent increase in carbon dioxide levels. Because the key greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, stays in the atmosphere for 100 years or longer, the climate is essentially “locked in” to some additional warming. Meanwhile, since the late 1970s, global average temperatures have increased by approximately 1 degree Fahrenheit and the volume of sea ice in the Arctic during the month of September has declined by almost 80 percent. Ocean temperatures have also warmed and the vast majority of glaciers have retreated.

Long-term changes in climate mean that when extreme weather events strike, they are likely to be increasingly severe and damaging. As sea levels rise, coastal storms are likely to cause flooding over a larger area and to cause areas already at-risk to flood more frequently than today. As temperatures get warmer, heat waves are expected to become more frequent, last longer, and intensify—posing a serious threat to the city’s power grid and New Yorkers’ health.

Through PlaNYC, the City has been making a concerted effort to understand the effects that climate change will have on New York. A critical part of this effort began as far back as 2008, when Mayor Bloomberg convened the New York City Panel on Climate Change (NPCC)—one of the first American cities to create a body of leading climate and social scientists charged with developing local climate projections. With representatives from leading scientific institutions, such as the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia University’s Earth Institute, the NPCC brought to bear state-of-the-art global climate models and local observations to analyze future local vulnerabilities.

In 2009, the NPCC released its findings in a groundbreaking report that made predictions for a set of chronic hazards and extreme events likely to confront the city in the future. The report—entitled Climate Risk Information 2009—described a New York that would be far more exposed to climate-related impacts going forward than it is today. For example, the NPCC projected that by mid-century New York could experience sea levels (under a “middle range” scenario) that are up to a foot higher, causing flooding from what is today a 100-year storm to occur two to three times as often. The NPCC also projected that by the 2050s New York was likely to experience more frequent heavy downpours and many more days at or above 90 degrees.

To begin addressing these risks, in 2008 the Mayor convened more than 40 public and private infrastructure operators as part of the Climate Change Adaptation Task Force, another PlaNYC initiative. Task Force members used the NPCC projections to evaluate the risks to their infrastructure and identify strategies to address them. For instance, Con Edison assessed how changes in extreme heat would impact future peak electrical load demand, to determine when additional capacity might be required.

The City also took action to strengthen its built environment. For example, the City required new waterfront development to design for the future risk of sea level rise and coastal storms, and passed regulations allowing buildings to elevate electrical equipment to their roofs without special permits. The City also launched the NYCoCool Roofs Program to paint rooftops white, thereby minimizing heat gain.

The work of the Climate Change Adaptation Task Force and City agencies demonstrates the power of accurate information to drive thoughtful planning and decision-making. That is why the City has continued to advocate for better and more current information on the risks New York faces. As mentioned earlier, the City pushed for an update to FEMA’s flood maps for New York so the City and its residents and businesses could better understand the existing risks from flooding during coastal storms. However, the City also recognized that even updated FEMA flood maps, because they are based on historic data, will not provide information about the changes that are likely to threaten New York in the future.

To ensure that the City would always have access to the latest information about future climate risks, in September 2012 New York City formally codified the NPCC and the Climate Change Adaptation Task Force when it wrote those two entities into law—the first bill passed by any local government in the country to institutionalize a process for updating local climate projections and identifying and implementing strategies to address climate risks. The new law requires that the NPCC meet twice a year, advise the City and the Climate Change Adaptation Task Force on the latest scientific developments, and update climate projections at least every three years, starting from March 2013.

Of course, in the wake of Sandy, waiting another three years would have been too long. That is why, in January 2013, the City reconvened the NPCC on an emergency basis to update its projections to inform planning for rebuilding and resiliency post-Sandy. NPCC members agreed to participate on an accelerated timetable, setting aside other important research to focus on updating the projections to help New York plan for the future.

Drawing on the latest climate models, recent observations about climate trends, and new information about greenhouse gas emissions, the NPCC updated its 2009 projections—in a document called Climate Risk Information 2013, which it has released concurrent with this report. These projections tell a dire story about New York’s future. (See table: NPCC 2013 Climate Projections; see sidebar: How New York’s Climate Projections are Developed)

The NPCC now projects that, by mid-century, sea levels could rise by more than 2.5 feet, especially if the polar ice sheets melt at a more rapid rate than previously anticipated. That magnitude of sea level rise would threaten  low lying communities in New York with regular and highly disruptive tidal flooding, and make flooding as severe as today’s 100-year storm at the Battery up to five times more likely. The NPCC also predicts it is more likely than not (more than 50 percent probability) that there will be an increase in the most intense hurricanes in the North Atlantic Basin.

Meanwhile, the NPCC also predicts that, by the 2050s, the city could have as many days at or above 90 degrees annually as Birmingham, Alabama has today—a threefold increase over what New York currently experiences. Heat waves could more than triple in frequency, lasting on average one and a half times longer than they do today. Similarly, it is also very likely (more than 90 percent probability) that the New York City area will see an increase in heavy downpours over this time period.

These projections have been subjected to rigorous peer review, and represent the best-available climate science for New York City. However, they are not yet officially recognized by the State or Federal governments because there is no formal mechanism for them to do so. As planning for resiliency moves forward in New York, it will be necessary to make sure that all stakeholders addressing climate change in New York City are using common projections based on the work of the NPCC to avoid confusion or conflicting standards.

The City also has worked with the NPCC to develop a series of “future flood maps” for New York that will help guide the city’s rebuilding and resiliency efforts. These forward-looking maps are created by using a simplified approach that combines the NPCC’s “high end” sea level rise projections with FEMA’s PWMs. The maps illustrate how the 100-year floodplain could increase over the next several decades with these high end projections. Because these maps were not developed using advanced coastal modeling, the accuracy of the flood projections is limited and they are not suitable for evaluating risks to indi- vidual properties. However, they are extremely useful for understanding the general extent of future flood risks. (See map: Future Flood Maps for the 2020s and 2050s; see sidebar: Possible Links Between Sandy and Climate Change)

The new maps show that the area that might be flooded in a 100-year storm in the 2020s could expand to 59 square miles (up 23 percent from the PWMs) and encompass approximately 88,800 buildings (up 31 percent). With more than 2.5 feet of sea level rise, New York City’s 100-year floodplain in the 2050s could be 72 square miles—a staggering 24 percent or nearly a quarter of the city—an area that today contains approximately 114,000 buildings (almost twice as many as indicated by the PWMs). This area currently accounts for 97 percent of the city’s power generation capacity, 20 percent of its hospital beds, and a large share of its public housing. Over 800,000 New Yorkers, or 10 percent of the city’s current population, now live in the 100-year floodplain projected for the 2050s—a number of flood- vulnerable residents that is greater than the total number of people living in the entire city of Boston.

Building on the information contained in these future flood maps, the City also commissioned an analysis of the economic impacts of projected changes in the city’s vulnerability to coastal storms. This work was completed by Swiss Re, one of the world’s largest reinsurers (a company that, because it provides its clients with reinsurance and insurance protection against natural catastrophe risks, has devel- oped expertise in projecting the probability of extreme weather and the resulting damage). Unlike the risk represented in FEMA’s maps, Swiss Re took into account the potential damage caused by both flooding and high winds. Their analysis shows that the combination of rising sea levels and more intense storms is expected to come with significant costs—costs that will be measured in many billions of dollars. (See sidebar: Expected Loss Modeling and Cost-Benefit Analysis)

With analytical tools such as the Swiss Re model, the City has yet another way of assessing the likelihood and impact of coastal storms on New York. Still the model does not assess the impact of extreme events beyond coastal storms (which include both storm surge and wind), nor does it assess potential public health impacts of coastal storms and other extreme weather events such as heat waves.

The City, however, has been working to fill this gap in understanding the public health risks posed to New York by climate change. As part of the Climate-Ready Cities and States Initiative, the City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) has been estimating health risks, identifying vulnerable populations, and developing public health adaptation strategies for extreme heat and other climate hazards. For example, without mitigation, hotter summers predicted for the 2020s (based on the NPCC 2009 projections), could cause an estimated 30 to 70 percent increase in heat-related deaths, or about 110 to 260 additional heat- related deaths per year on average in New York City compared to the baseline period for the analysis (1998–2002). Additional work will be necessary to refine these projections and identify strategies with which to respond, but this analysis is an important starting point that illustrates, in yet another way, the stakes associated with climate change.

The remainder of this report outlines specific initiatives to address the current and future climate change-related vulnerabilities faced by New York as outlined above. But these initiatives will be most effective only if they continue to be informed by the best-available science. And while New York has been a global leader in this area, there is still more that the City can do—on its own and with the Federal government—to improve the quality of the data and tools available to it.

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