S3 E3: “You can multiply the benefits and you can also multiply the joy.” Big storms aren’t going anywhere any time soon, so it’s essential to understand how cities like New York are adapting to and preparing for these increasingly precedented weather events. Christina gets the lowdown on some of the massive resiliency projects happening in the city. She learns about an exciting model for climate adaptation planning -- one that marries community voices with global design thinking. And, we get insight into one development that’s been the subject of some controversy on the Lower East Side.
S3 E3: “You can multiply the benefits and you can also multiply the joy.”
Big storms aren’t going anywhere any time soon, so it’s essential to understand how cities like New York are adapting to and preparing for these increasingly precedented weather events. Christina gets the lowdown on some of the massive resiliency projects happening in the city. She learns about an exciting model for climate adaptation planning -- one that marries community voices with global design thinking. And, we get insight into one development that’s been the subject of some controversy on the Lower East Side.
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[00:00:39] Christina Thompson: Welcome back to A Little Green, an Avocado Green Brands podcast. I'm Christina Thompson. Way, way back in Season One, we learned that responding to climate change falls into two very important buckets. The first: mitigation, like, how are we reducing greenhouse gas emissions? And the second: adaptation. How are we adjusting to and preparing for the effects of climate change? How will we live with extreme weather and climate disasters? So what I want to know is, how has my city been handling these two buckets? How has New York been adapting since Sandy's very loud wake up call?
[00:01:24] Amy Chester: You know, I am getting chills just thinking about this because this is something that, you know, absolutely affected everyone I knew, either professionally or personally.
[00:01:32] Christina Thompson: That is Amy Chester.
[00:01:34] Amy Chester: This is something that you could have never, never, ever imagined. It really looked like a war zone from the movies.
[00:01:39] Christina Thompson: Amy's a lifelong New Yorker, and she's been at the forefront of the city's adaptation planning. Amy has a background in community organizing, so she has a lot of experience connecting communities and government.
[00:01:50] Amy Chester: Hurricane Sandy was a superstorm when it hit New York, so it wasn't even the worst of the worst that could have happened. The storm took a left hand turn before it hit the Bronx, so we haven't yet experienced the worst of it all.
[00:02:07] Christina Thompson: And if you think about it, this wasn't that long after another catastrophic storm that we all know.
[00:02:12] George W. Bush: "We are dealing with one of the worst natural disasters in our nation's history."
[00:02:18] Amy Chester: The entire country, if not the world, was watching during Hurricane Katrina, and we thought this was the once-in-a-hundred year storm or a one-off experience. It wasn't until Hurricane Sandy hit the New York City region, did we really understand what our vulnerability was.
[00:02:34] Christina Thompson: Hurricane Katrina was one of the deadliest hurricanes in US history, and the Bush Administration's response was widely seen as a failure. And so no government, city or federal, wanted to repeat those mistakes.
[00:02:46] Barack Obama: "This is going to be a big and powerful storm."
[00:02:50] Amy Chester: We had heard that the Obama administration had been meeting before Hurricane Sandy knowing that there would be a hurricane and knowing that they did not want to replicate what happened during Hurricane Katrina.
[00:03:03] Christina Thompson: After Sandy, the Obama administration did something different. They got proactive. They launched a contest in June of 2013 -- a design competition. One that would mark a huge change in federal disaster response, and Amy would serve as managing director.
[00:03:21] Amy Chester: "Oh wait, you want me to come in and do what?" You know, like... It was the first time that disaster dollars -- post-disaster dollars -- were set aside for pre-disaster planning.
[00:03:36] Christina Thompson: At the time, which seems counterintuitive now, disaster funding went towards rebuilding things exactly as they were before, with no improvements for resiliency.
[00:03:46] Amy Chester: But with this new awakening after Hurricane Sandy, we understood that putting back what was there before was not going to protect communities for the future.
[00:03:56] Christina Thompson: Rebuild By Design reached out to world-class architects, engineers, and urban planners from around the world.
[00:04:02] Amy Chester: "Hey, if you are an expert, and you think you can help communities in this area, we want to hear from you. What are all the different issues that our region is experiencing?" so we can give the input to these, like, incredibly smart people and connect those smart people with communities on the ground who have that incredible lived experience to design and develop these projects. From the very, very beginning, they're actually designing the process together, which is very unusual for government to do.
[00:04:47] Christina Thompson: I asked Amy whether or not we'd accomplished what we set out to post-Sandy. What ground have we covered since then to, like, fortify the city as best as possible?
[00:04:56] Amy Chester: Because these are such big projects, it moves very slowly. Out of the Hurricane Sandy design competition, seven projects were funded by HUD at $930 million. Those projects now have over $4 billion in them, so those projects are enormous, and they're being implemented.
[00:05:15] NEWS CLIPS: Progress has been made on a $1.4 billion resiliency project on Manhattan's East Side to protect neighborhoods from flooding.
[00:05:24] Christina Thompson: Amy mentioned that one of the big projects, and the one that was awarded the biggest grant, is currently underway, which is exciting.
[00:05:31] VOX POP: ...Uh, I've lived on the Lower East Side for almost 30 years...
[00:05:34] VOX POP: ...We've been living here 45 years...
[00:05:36] VOX POP: ...I was born and raised in the low East side...
[00:05:40] Amy Chester: So the Big U was a vision that came out of Rebuild By Design. The idea was to take the lower Manhattan flood zone, which is in a U shape from the east side of Manhattan, around 25th Street, to the west side of Manhattan in the fifties, and create infrastructure that could be designed by the local communities according to the typography that is adjacent to the waterfront.
[00:06:01] Christina Thompson: The Big U team had gone through that rigorous community collaboration process required by Rebuild By Design. Part of the plan, called the ESCR or East Side Coastal Resiliency Project, was to take the 57 acre East Side River Park and create a protective barrier around it -- or a berm -- to keep the neighborhood from flooding. The city spent almost five years building out the design with the community.
[00:06:25] Amy Chester: And then, a couple years ago, overnight, the city pretty much went dark. And then, seemingly out of nowhere, on a Friday afternoon, they announced that there was going to be a new plan. A plan that they had not talked to the community about before. And that set off a whole series of events.
[00:06:45] Christina Thompson: The original plan would've created a protective barrier between the park and the highway.
[00:06:49] Amy Chester: But, over time, that park was going to get flooded, and that park is not designed, or was not designed a hundred years ago by Robert Moses, to be a park that gets flooded. So ultimately that park would've had to be replaced.
[00:07:02] Christina Thompson: Instead, the city decided to replace the entire park, which was going to cost a whole lot more.
[00:07:08] Amy Chester: So they announced on this Friday, "We have a new plan. We're going to raise the entire park 8 to 10 feet." And that set off a lot of anger and confusion in the community.
[00:07:19] VOX POP: ...I feel very conflicted about the East River Park...
[00:07:21] VOX POP: ...Apprehensive that the park is going to be out of commission for a long, long time...
[00:07:25] VOX POP: ...Because they cut down more than a thousand trees...
[00:07:27] VOX POP: ...Do I have questions about it? Yes...
[00:07:29] VOX POP: ...Everything's changing...
[00:07:33] Damaris Reyes: That just made everybody go bananas. We felt disrespected. We felt like our time wasn't valued.
[00:07:40] Christina Thompson: That's Damaris Reyes. She's the executive director of Good Old Lower East Side or G-O-L-E-S. GOLES. It's an amazing organization devoted to neighborhood housing and preservation.
[00:07:52] Damaris Reyes: This is my neighborhood. I grew up here. My kids grew up here. My friends live here. I, I love this place. I, I don't know who I would be without it, so I think that's my role, is that I know this neighborhood really well, and I am able to navigate a lot because of that.
[00:08:11] Christina Thompson: Damaris spoke to me from her apartment in the Lower East Side.
[00:08:14] Damaris Reyes: Outside of my window right now are two giant, mega resiliency projects, so if you hear some pile driving, know that that's resiliency at work.
[00:08:28] Christina Thompson: When Sandy hit the Lower East Side, it exposed just how vulnerable residents were to climate change.
[00:08:33] Damaris Reyes: We have a lot of sewage infrastructure issues. A lot of basements get flooded, and that's why Sandy was so devastating to us, but people don't know that because they don't see the outside, like in Far Rockaways you saw, you know, houses collapse. Here, you didn't see the damage. It was, a lot of it was underground. We used to always say that we had to defend the Lower East Side against greedy, speculative, luxury developers. We never really thought that we had to defend our community against the issues of climate change and environmental injustice. And what we've learned is that climate and environmental justice go hand-in-hand with issues of housing and issues of the economy. And so we are focused on the intersectionality of that and addressing it from a much more broad perspective, a much more holistic place. Resiliency is part of being able to survive poverty, and injustice, or displacement. We talk about resiliency as only relating to climate and disaster, but it's really part of who we are and the fabric.
[00:09:54] Christina Thompson: So can you tell me a little more about how this project came together?
[00:10:00] Damaris Reyes: When they first came to us about this project, we were terrified. At the time, there were some efforts to privatize the public housing in our neighborhood that's actually across the street from the park. So, to me, and to us, we were like, "Oh my gosh, they're going to beautify the waterfront so that the land could be more valuable, and they could sell off the public housing," which was actually a proposal on the table. And I told them, "We will work with you." To see, because we feel like we deserve to be protected as a community because the west side gets everything. They used to get everything. We couldn't believe when we were chosen. We just couldn't believe it. But I did tell them, at that time, "We are excited we want to do this, but if you guys sell us up the river, we will come for you." It is not a project without controversy. And the East River Park is a treasured park in this neighborhood, both for local residents and for people coming from around the city.
[00:11:08] Christina Thompson: Absolutely. I live in Brooklyn and I would go just to run in the park.
[00:11:13] Damaris Reyes: Exactly.
[00:11:14] Christina Thompson: GOLES officially got involved in the project as part of the community group that was advising the design team.
[00:11:21] Damaris Reyes: We were doing this work initially and coming up with these plans...
[00:11:26] Christina Thompson: ...but then the city changed things up, with little to no communication.
[00:11:29] Damaris Reyes: There was no communication about it! I felt like I had put my neck on the line to really engage the community in this project, and this was the first time there was real money, a real plan to move forward. And so, when they changed it, it caused a lot of chaos, and people were upset about it. The public's trust was eroded. And now, here is several years more we have to wait for this project to be completed. So obviously people are very skeptical.
[00:12:03] VOX POP: ...I mean, it was terrible when they destroyed the trees...
[00:12:05] VOX POP: ...You know, we lost the park maybe three, four years...
[00:12:08] VOX POP: ...I miss it so much and um...
[00:12:09] VOX POP: ...When we get it back, it's not going to be what it was...
[00:12:13] Damaris Reyes: A lot of organizing ensued. People were fighting against the plan. There was a major campaign to protect the trees. If you add some extra layers, like confusion, what it tends to breed is misinformation -- and with good reason! So people were like, "Oh, is this, like, a land grab? Is this, like, we're going to clear the land and build luxury housing?" It's not that. The truth is that many of those trees had to be torn down. New trees were going to be planted. It is tragic that we had to lose those trees, but we also care about human lives, and we understand that there are some trade-offs and compromises that we're going to have to make.
[00:12:55] Amy Chester: To be honest, I, I personally think that it could have all been avoided if the mayor's office stopped for a moment and said, "Hey, we're running into these interesting issues, and we need to figure this out. Let's bring back together the people that we've been working with for four and a half years. Let's talk about this, have this conversation and we can decide together." This is a huge lesson learned, I believe, in what true collaboration means.
[00:13:22] VOX POP: ...I mean, I'm hoping that it will turn out well...
[00:13:26] VOX POP: ...I, I'm excited about it....
[00:13:28] VOX POP: ...Looking forward to when we have a brand new, beautiful park on the East Side...
[00:13:33] Christina Thompson: Despite all its controversy and the mistakes, the ESCR will protect more than 120,000 New Yorkers against future flooding, as well as provide new amenities for the community.
[00:13:44] Damaris Reyes: It's a project that I think is a beacon, right? Like, people are going to come from all over the world to see this, and we have to make the most of this moment. We didn't make this sacrifice as a community for no reason, right? Like, we want this park not only to serve as some form of protection for our community, but we also want this park to serve as a source of education for everybody else.
[00:14:11] Christina Thompson: And Rebuild By Design's collaborative approach to resiliency has been successfully replicated in more than a dozen cities.
[00:14:19] Damaris Reyes: I'm really proud to be a part of that history and that legacy of projects and of efforts.
[00:14:27] Christina Thompson: So the ESCR is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2026. I know that's a ways away, but these big adaptation projects take time. And it's clear that community input is key to shaping the future that we want to live in. And, the great news is that we personally can do something to move the needle today.
[00:14:47] Damaris Reyes: Find out what's happening at your local community board. Every neighborhood has one. Know who your elected officials are. Sometimes you got to know what they're working on so that you can know what's live and popping in your own hood too, and making sure that you're not turning a blind eye to something that's really important to you.
[00:15:12] Christina Thompson: Before we said goodbye, I wanted to ask Damaris how she sustains herself in this intense, ever-changing work. Where does she find her joy?
[00:15:20] Damaris Reyes: The short, truest answer is that I go to karaoke every week. It's like therapy. I let it all hang out, and I leave it there on the floor. But really, the other truth is that what sustains me in this work, I think, is that I love my neighborhood, I love my community, I love people, and the love that I have for my family, and my grandson, and the future that I want them to have, and I want him to have, that's what sustains me. I do this for love.
[00:15:56] Christina Thompson: We need more people like Damaris -- community leaders and residents doing the planning work.
[00:16:02] Damaris Reyes: People on the ground really have a lot of answers and know firsthand the impacts. We are frontline communities, but we are not often well-resourced so that we can effectively address these issues. And that is what is, I think, in a large way, what hinders our progress. I think there's some attention to that and I've seen some movement, so that's the good news.
[00:16:26] Christina Thompson: The more people get involved with their communities and consider the kind of future they do want, the more proactive and resilient we become.
[00:16:35] Amy Chester: I'm not scared of adaptation planning, I'm actually really excited about it because I think it gives a community agency over what they want their own neighborhood to look like and how they want to live. And you can do it in ways that really enhance the community every day. You can multiply the benefits, and you can also multiply the joy.
[00:16:54] VOX POP: ...What do I like about the Lower East Side?...
[00:16:55] VOX POP: ...I love the people. I love the shops, the restaurants...
[00:16:59] VOX POP: ...Feels very community, kind of, centric...
[00:17:02] VOX POP: ...Feels like there's still different kinds of people here all living together...
[00:17:07] VOX POP: ...Honestly, I love it over here...
[00:17:09] VOX POP: ...It's home...
[00:17:11] Amy Chester: Taking a moment to have those conversations with neighbors and talking about, "What do we want our community to be?" is really a once-in-a-lifetime chance.
[00:17:25] Christina Thompson: Next time on A Little Green, we get out into the water ourselves with a local group that's taking infrastructure into their own hands.
[00:17:32] Mike Carew: Today's a beautiful day to be beyond the water anywhere. You don't have to twist my arm too hard.
[00:17:36] Christina Thompson: To learn more about all of the organizations and topics we chatted about on today's episode, check out alittlegreenpodcast.com or head to avocadomattress.com to read more on our online magazine and visit goles.org to learn more about Damaris's work. That's G-O-L-E-S.org. A Little Green is an Avocado Green Brands podcast. This podcast was written and produced by Anna McClain, and myself, Christina Thompson, and the music is by Aaron Levison. And thanks to Megan Stahl for additional production support.
[00:18:13] Damaris Reyes: So I like to sing things like Adele, like Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah."
[00:18:19] Christina Thompson: The hard ones. Yeah.
[00:18:21] Damaris Reyes: Wait, let's be clear. I didn't say that I sound good. I just said I like to sing it. Hallelujah.
[00:18:27] Christina Thompson: So good. So good.