Where to Build Red Hook's Future Flood Walls?

RED HOOK, BROOKLYN — City officials laid out three options for where they could possibly build future flood barriers in the Brooklyn seaside community of Red Hook at a Community Board 6 meeting on Wednesday night.

The Red Hook Integrated Flood Protection Feasibility Study, an ongoing exploration of how to protect Red Hook from stormy waters and rising tides, is being conducted by the Mayor’s Office of Recovery and Resiliency (ORR) and the New York City Economic Development Corporation (EDC).

The project currently has $100 million in federal funding behind it — $50 million from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and another $50 million from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

City staffers are still deep in the process determining how a flood protection system — which could be built in a variety of ways, such as erecting walls, berms (raised strips of land) or other technologies — could be installed along or near the Red Hook coastline, all while preserving the community's current way of life and letting the local economy thrive.

At Wednesday's meeting, Jessica Colon, a staffer with the ORR, presented neighbors with an in-the-works diagram of three general flood-protection scenarios that the city is considering.

In one scenario, a flood barrier runs along the waterfront; in a second, the barrier is built further inland; and in a third, it's built further inland still.

The first and most expensive scenario would protect the largest portion of the Red Hook peninsula. The second and third scenarios appear to exclude some existing Red Hook parking lots and warehouses from the protection zone — although, again, the map provided by city officials is not meant to be geographically precise at this point in the process.

City staffers stressed at the meeting that the three scenarios depicted on the diagram (below) merely provide a framework to help residents visualize possibilities for the future of Red Hook, and do not represent actual, established boundaries under consideration.

Two public sessions, during which city officials and Red Hook residents have discussed the flood-protection project, have already taken place — the most recent one in April. A third session is scheduled for Oct. 13 at 6:30 p.m. at P.S. 15.

Colon said the city is hoping to finalize the project's feasibility study by early 2017, so it can move forward with a more solidified design and get the project underway within the next several years.

If you'd like to receive updates on the project via email, or if you have questions or comments for city officials, you can contact them directly at rhifps@edc.nyc or follow @nyclimate on Twitter. The project's website, maintained by the NYC EDC, also hosts a large amount of useful information.

Pictured at top: These swaths of Red Hook, in blue, are at particular risk of flooding during a major storm. Image via NYC EDC