Green city, red tape
It’s more than a little ironic to think that exhaustive environmental reviews are a hurdle in the path of the city’s resiliency efforts, but that’s the fact: These onerous procedures, atop a pile of other city, state, and federal red tape, risk unacceptably delaying upgrades to lifesaving infrastructure needed to protect New Yorkers from climate change’s ravages.
The flagship East Side Coastal Resiliency Project — an ambitious initiative to restructure the urban landscape and waterfront around the Lower East Side, primarily to combat increased flood risks as a result of climate-change-related storms — first submitted a notice of intent to prepare an environmental impact statement in 2015. The draft impact statement was finally completed in April of 2019, including 13 chapters encompassing everything from construction noise to land use to transportation. At this rate, we’ll build seawalls around the city by the year 2200.
Obviously, projects of great scope require careful thinking to ensure they do what they’re supposed to do, don’t trigger any dangerous side effects, and work for the community. We are certainly not opposed to, for example, having locals weigh in on tweaks to enhance livability, like how to set up recreational areas.
But this is a crisis situation, and it requires some crisis-level power to cut through some of the more cumbersome regulatory requirements. A number of cities around the world have already begun experimenting with versions of declared “climate emergencies,” albeit usually to cut down on emissions and lower carbon footprints.
New York should consider adapting the concept to the brick and mortar needed to protect ourselves from rains and tides. This might be as straightforward as exempting climate resiliency projects from some portions of the standard environmental review process, land use and zoning requirements, and other obstacles, as coordinated by a central resiliency office.
We wouldn’t want to trip on red tape if the city was under attack in any other way, and we shouldn’t do so just because the attack now is coming from Mother Nature herself.