With FiDi’s Resilience Master Plan Still More Than a Decade Away, One Building Wants Flood Protection Now
As the administration of Mayor Eric Adams continues to plan for resiliency measures aimed at safeguarding the Financial District, the owners of at least one local building have decided to take matters into their own hands. In what may be a harbinger of things to come, the owners of 125 Maiden Lane are planning to install flip gates while awaiting protection from the City’s Financial District and Seaport Climate Resilience Plan. This plan was announced in January 2022, is estimated to cost $7 billion, and will take 15 years to complete. It has not yet been funded and no date for start of construction has been announced.
The AquaFence flood mitigation system selected by 125 Maiden Lane can be deployed within 12 hours but requires preinstallation of infrastructure, like anchor bolts, on public property such as the sidewalks surrounding the building, which occupies the full block bordered by Pearl, Fletcher, and Water Streets, and Maiden Lane. (The actual panels that will protect the building in the event of a flood are stored inside during normal times, but taken out and lined up around the building’s perimeter during flood danger.)
The planning is made more complicated by the fact that these sidewalks are already home to multiple kinds of equipment, such as fire hydrants, metal grates above electrical vaults, pedestrian ramps, light poles, and signage. Installing new infrastructure near any of this gear requires the permission of multiple government agencies and utilities. The AquaFence designers and the owners of 125 Maiden Lane have thus far obtained sign-off from all the relevant stakeholders, except one: the City’s Department of Transportation (DOT), which has jurisdiction over sidewalks throughout the five boroughs.
One complicating factor in DOT’s consideration of this proposal is that when the AquaFence system is deployed, it will completely block the sidewalks on Pearl and Fletcher Streets, while also partially obstructing them on Water Street and Maiden Lane. This will further have the effect of making pedestrian ramps (unfettered access to which is required under the Americans with Disabilities Act) unusable for as long as the flood wall is need to protect the building.
Because the statutory language and case law related to the Americans with Disabilities Act have not yet been fully reconciled with emergency measures related to climate change, the legal status of such an obstruction remains unclear. One possible way of addressing this ambiguity is a promise (voluntarily undertaken by the owners of 125 Maiden Lane) that they will not deploy their flood protection system until and unless the City declares a state of emergency, and directs residents to evacuate. They have also committed to removing the system as soon as such an order is rescinded.
At its May meeting, Community Board 1 (CB1) enacted a resolution urging DOT to issue “revocable consent” for the installation of the sidewalk anchor bolts that will allow for deployment of the AquaFence system at 125 Maiden Lane. But the Board also urged DOT to formulate a plan for the Financial District “that prioritizes pedestrians, including persons with disabilities, when sidewalks are obstructed by flood barriers,” saying that such a plan “is needed so that safe, accessible pedestrian mobility is possible during all weather conditions.”
The resolution concludes by “imploring the DOT to create, and make public, a plan for safe and accessible mobility for all road users, including pedestrians with disabilities, during states of emergency when deployables are activated and make the sidewalks partially or fully inaccessible.”
The City’s Financial District and Seaport Climate Resilience Plan aims to protect the nearly mile-long stretch of East River waterfront between the Brooklyn Bridge and the Staten Island Ferry Terminal, along with the inland and upland areas adjacent to the shoreline. The plan focuses on “passive” flood defense, which translates into refashioning the landscape and elevating the riverbank, thus creating a physical barrier that will stop flood waters. This barricade will consist of a network of decks, berms, and breakwaters that will extend into the East River between 90 and 200 feet. The outermost edge of this complex would rise to an elevation between three and five feet above the waterline, while its landward side would reach as high as 15 feet.
Such permanent (rather than temporary or deployable) measures are deemed necessary because Lower Manhattan is expected to face regular flooding in the years to come, and it is impractical to raise and lower floodgates, for example, on a daily basis. Current projections call for the East River to overtop it banks routinely in the 2040s, with such floods becoming a monthly event in the 2050s, and a daily occurrence in the 2080s. By the turn of the next century, daily high tides are expected to penetrate up to three blocks inland (to Pearl Street), with severe storms bringing as much as 15 feet of water as far as William Street (five blocks from the shoreline).