Battery Resilience Budget Jumps By 18 Percent in Four Months
The City broke ground May 6 on the Battery Coastal Resilience project, which covers the shoreline between the Staten Island Ferry Terminal and Pier A, and aims to protect the historic park from sea level rise caused by climate change by raising its wharf five feet above the current elevation, among other measures. In announcing the start of construction, the City also estimated the cost of the project at $200 million, a leap of $31 million (or 18 percent) above the budget announced in January, when the price was pegged at $169 million.
At the groundbreaking ceremony, Mayor Eric Adams said, “today, we take another major step forward by breaking ground on the Battery Coastal Resilience Project. It’s a $200-million component of the overall Lower Manhattan Coastal Resiliency Strategy, the single largest urban climate adaptation project in the nation, and it will lay groundwork to protect our City’s future.”
He added, “the Battery Coastal Resilience Project will rebuild and elevate the current wharf and promenade. It will preserve the area’s parks, paths, and community spaces. It will protect our memorials and historic monuments and improve ferry services, transit and accessibility.”
The Battery Coastal Resilience project concluded its design process last spring and is expected to be completed in 2026. But if the worst-case forecasts contained in a February report from the New York State Climate Impacts Assessment (a scientific investigation into how global warming is affecting local communities, ecosystems, and the economy) prove accurate, the project may offer only a limited reprieve.
That analysis predicts that by mid-century, sea levels surrounding Lower Manhattan could reach levels 14 to 19 inches above the study’s baseline (an average of the years 1995 through 2014) and then jump between 25 and 39 inches in the 2080s. By the end of this century, the same models peg local sea level rise to between 30 and 50 inches higher than the baseline, with a rise of 47 to 89 inches by 2150.
Long before the turn of the next century, however, these increases are expected to translate into more frequent flood events, in a form of inundation unrelated to storms known as “high-tide flooding.” Also referred to as “sunny day flooding,” it is triggered by the gravitational pull of new and full moons that results in exceptionally high tides, and is exacerbated by rising sea levels. In this scenario, the seven feet-plus of additional water predicted by this report for the mid-22nd century would overtop elevated Battery Coastal Resilience barriers by more than two feet several times each week.