Sandy-Battered West Side Ignored In Mayor's Climate Plans: Pols

NEW YORK CITY — Manhattan's west side, battered by Superstorm Sandy, is getting shafted in the Mayor's climate resilience plans, according to a slew of local elected officials.

A letter sent this week to the Mayor's Office of Climate and Environmental Justice aks to include neighborhoods on Manhattan's west side in this year's selection for the Climate Strong Communities initiative led by the office.

"The West Village and Chelsea alongside the Hudson River saw significant seawater flooding during Superstorm Sandy, causing the destruction of thousands of homes and businesses," reads the letter.

"Over eleven years later, while storm resiliency projects are underway in other parts of Manhattan," the letter reads, "the West Side has yet to see any significant storm mitigation measures, causing the destruction of thousands of homes and businesses."

The letter is signed by Council Member Erik Bottcher, Reps. Jerry Nadler and Dan Goldman, Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine, State Senators Brad Hoylman-Sigal and Brian Kavanagh, and Assembly Members Deborah Glick, Linda Rosenthal and Tony Simone.

Bottcher's office told Patch that the Climate and Environmental Justice office would be announcing new neighborhoods to be added soon, and that they wanted to be sure the west side was included due to the extensive damage suffered from the storm — and the lack of investment since.

Some of the "severely impacted areas" cited in the letter include numerous income-restricted housing developments, including Bailey-Holt House, Westbeth Artists Housing, NYCHA's Fulton and Elliott-Chelsea Houses, where Superstorm Sandy dumped storm surges and caused power outages.

The October 2012 Superstorm left some parts of the neighborhood in five feet of water, including many of Chelsea's famous art galleries, with countless buildings facing hundreds of thousands of dollars in repairs.

Despite the damage, the neighborhoods have not benefited from "existing or planned Sandy recovery projects," the letter says.

The Army Corps of Engineers has a tentative plan for a massive Christopher Street seawall as part of the larger New York and New Jersey Harbor and Tributaries study, but the final results of the study have yet to be completed.

Because of the lack of resilience work on the west side, the officials state, the area "would be a good fit for the program."

That program, called the Climate Strong Communities initiative, was launched in late 2022 with the goal of developing resiliency projects for specific at-risk neighborhoods which missed out on post-Sandy funding and projects aimed at protecting against future storms.

“For far too long, communities have been left behind based on their zip codes and economics, and Climate Strong Communities is focused on boosting resiliency in the most high-need and environmental justice neighborhoods," said a spokesperson from the office of Climate and Environmental Justice. "We are currently reviewing neighborhood selections for year 2, and our selections will be based on a range of factors, including flood and heat risks, environmental justice designation criteria, and capital project status. We look forward to announcing these selections next month."

In its first year, the Climate Strong Communities program targeted Soundview in the Bronx, Brownsville in Brooklyn, Corona in Queens, and Port Richmond in Staten Island, as well as continuing work in Canarsie and East Harlem.

Those projects, according to a recent presentation, could include, among other ideas, tree plantings and urban forestry to create street cooling features, natural drainage corridors inside local parks, solar energy, raised shorelines and resilience hubs.