Federal Officials Announce 6 Projects to Protect N.Y., N.J. From Storm Damage (Insurance Journal)

Insurance Journal
(6/4/2014 1:06 PM, Jonathan Lemire and David Porter)

A system of dikes around the tip of lower Manhattan, and water pumps and parks across the Hudson River in New Jersey were among the projects selected Monday to receive nearly $1 billion in federal funding as part of efforts to protect the New York City region from Superstorm Sandy-type flooding.

The six projects — winners of a design competition created by President Barack Obama’s Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force — are intended to offer a variety of safeguards to protect the low-lying coastal areas that were punished by catastrophic flooding when the superstorm made landfall in October 2012.

“Today is just the beginning in making these projects a reality across the region,” Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan said Monday in Little Ferry, New Jersey, a community just north of the Meadowlands sports complex that suffered severe damage from a storm surge in the Hackensack River. “We are going to build them, we are going to make lives better and make communities and families safer.”

One winner, nicknamed “The Big U,” would create an 8-mile long system of dikes that will be placed around the tip of Lower Manhattan. Another plans to build a series of natural breakwaters — including oyster beds and other living reefs — that could absorb the brunt of storm waters racing toward Staten Island.