Billions on Flood Barriers Now Might Save New York City

[xchrom]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-11-09/billions-on-flood-barriers-now-might-save-new-york-city-l.html


Marine Lance Cpl. Trina Azevedo from the 8th Engineer Support Battallon out of Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, carries a hose to pump out flood water on Nov. 8, 2012 in the Breezy Point neighborhood of the Queens borough of New York City.

Could a surge-protection barrier have saved New York City from much of the flood ravages of superstorm Sandy?

Malcolm Bowman and other hydrologists are convinced it could have.

Bowman, an oceanographer who has spent much of a 40-year career warily watching the tidal flows in and around New York Harbor, recalls a few years back being down in the construction site of Manhattan’s South Ferry subway station.

“It was just a concrete box underground then,” he said in an interview. Bowman, at the time an observer in the middle of filming a documentary, looked up a long stairway leading to blue sky and asked a construction official, “Would you mind telling us how far above sea level is the entrance there at street level?”

[ProgressiveProfessor]

1. A better and more environmentally friendly approach would be to remove the buildings and other man

made changes to the shores and estuaries.

There is little natural in NYC and we need to let mother nature repair the damage we have done.