About those basements

If the super-soaking of the past two weeks is a sign of things to come, New Yorkers need to radically revise their relationships with their basements. At least 11 of those killed in Wednesday night’s apocalyptic downpour were trapped in flooded below-grade apartments, as basements in apartment buildings, single family homes and other structures throughout the city filled knee-deep and worse.

Over the long term, the city will need to pour who knows how much money into upgrading its age-old sewer systems so that downpours, not to mention coastal storm surges and rising sea levels, don’t cause billions of dollars in damages and endanger people’s lives.

While that herculean task is underway, we’ve got to do much more to protect the stuff and especially the people already residing underground. Councilman Brad Lander has championed a small pilot program (which, like so many other things, stalled during COVID) to bring a few illegal basement apartments up to legal and safety standards. That task should be expedited and expanded. Thousands of New Yorkers live safely in legal basement units; illegal ones should be brought into the light of regulation.

So too must Lander, Democratic mayoral nominee Eric Adams and others who’ve called for bringing lots of new basement units online pump the brakes on such grand plans. Until flooding risks are figured out, that falls in the bucket of moral hazard.

Councilman Justin Brannan’s also got a seemingly smart idea worthy of further study: following the lead of Albany, D.C and elsewhere and giving property owners rebates to cover the cost of backwater valves, relatively inexpensive equipment that can stave off flooding. When the deluge is especially torrential, overwhelming the sewers, those valves might not wholly save the day — but they will still likely make a big difference.

Better for individuals or the city to spend a few thousand dollars per building now than to have to deal with the consequences of thousands more waterlogged basements, and who knows how many lost lives.