Transcript Sinking Cities NYC for previous post

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Introduction 0:00 (Helicopter whirring) -If we understand how nature is trying to shape New York City, 0:07 then maybe we can make New York City fit into the nature of the place and then, that way, make it possible to live in the city 0:14 into the next 400 years and maybe the 400 years after that. 0:19 -From the sky, it's clear that New York City was boldly built right to the water's edge. 0:25 It's a coastal city surrounded by water on all sides. ♪♪ 0:32 Just a century ago, there was more cargo tonnage and people passing through this port than all other major harbors 0:38 in the country combined. With 578 miles of coastline, 0:44 all that water is now New York's greatest threat. -The real challenge for us in the 21st century is, 0:50 can we be as wise as we are smart? We're so smart about so many things. We're so clever and yet, somehow, 0:58 when it actually comes to making hard decisions, the wise decisions based on what we know, we have trouble doing that. 1:06 I don't know how many more examples nature needs to give us to do the right thing. 1:13 -The world's great cities face threats they have never before encountered. New York... 1:19 Tokyo... London... Miami... The threats come from the sea, 1:26 from above and from below. These are the problems and their solutions... 1:32 ♪♪ 1:39 ...for when the water comes. [ Waves crashing ] 1:52 -A Mayor of the City of New York has ordered a mandatory evacuation. All residents are urged to comply 1:58 with this evacuation request. -In 2012, superstorm Sandy catches New York by surprise. Twin Bridges neighborhood 2:07 The city is flooded with 1.6 billion gallons of water containing raw and partially treated sewage. 2:13 The storm surge, measuring over 13 feet, engulfs New York with over 700,000 tons of debris. 2:22 It is the worst natural disaster in the city's history. 2:28 Trever Holland is a resident and an attorney in a neighborhood called Two Bridges. 2:35 -It's on the Lower East Side, and it's called Two Bridges because our neighborhood is located between the two bridges, 2:40 the Manhattan Bridge and the Brooklyn Bridge. -The median household income in this inner-city neighborhood of 38,000 people 2:48 is just over $21,000. That's well under half of the average median income 2:54 of New York City. -It's an affordable neighborhood, working-class individuals. 3:02 We're in a very diverse neighborhood, one of the most diverse in Manhattan. Different economic levels. Different races. 3:08 Different creeds. Different religions. I mean, it's one of the reasons why I love living here. -Two Bridges is situated on New York's floodplain. 3:17 At five to 10 feet above sea level, parts of it will be completely underwater if sea levels rise by six feet 3:24 in the next century, as predicted. -Someone had talked about storm amnesia, 3:31 and I think that does happen because you forget how bad it was. 3:39 One of the more vivid scenes I remember is that we take a look in the backyard area where our playground is... 3:46 There were three or four homeless people, who didn't get the notice that a storm was coming. They don't have cell phones. They're not watching the news. 3:53 They just realize that the water is rising. And they were basically trapped in an area and they were standing in water 3:59 trying to figure out how to get out of this. I remember that vividly thinking, "How many people didn't get the news flash 4:04 that a storm is coming?" And they were just sleeping along the river and then all of a sudden the water came up. 4:10 ♪♪ These are porters. 4:15 They stayed overnight. They had no choice. This one is actually South Street. This was early in the storm. 4:22 The water had just come over the edges. When you think of Manhattan, 4:27 you kind of think, "Oh, apartment buildings." You don't really think that, you know, a building flooding, 4:32 especially in our particular neighborhood. This was the point where we could no longer enter the street. 4:38 I mean, this is the side of the building and that's actually the sidewalk you can see on the right side. It had already gone up to the four-foot wall 4:46 that is outside of our building. And, looking down from the street, 4:51 a sea of water, or a river of water. -Two Bridges got slammed by the storm surge in 2012, 4:59 and it will be slammed again. -We know that there's gonna be another big hurricane. 5:05 That hurricane could come next year, and they're gonna blame the politicians for not acting fast enough. 5:10 We have to recognize that climate change is here. We know that there's gonna be sea-level rise 5:17 and we know the storms are getting more intense. We should find ways, have a plan, for people to live in a safe way. 5:23 We're so creative about our science but, somehow, we haven't really brought our full suite of creativity to this question. 5:31 ♪♪ 5:37 This place is on the edge, it's on the edge of the continent, and that's what makes New York City so special, 5:43 and that also is what's threatening New York City going into the future. -New York City faces two challenges. 5:50 The first is the inevitable fact that the city lies in a hurricane zone, and storms will continue to come no matter what. 5:57 -My kids are 10 and 15. I know that they're gonna have to live with this the rest of their lives. 6:03 I think this is something that is embedded in us as people who have had to live through it. 6:08 -The second is rising sea levels. -I think that people in New York understand 6:14 that sea level is rising and that it's a critical problem. How much it's rising? And how we'll adapt? 6:21 Those are still open questions. -The challenges are clear, but what are the solutions? 6:28 How can New York adapt and survive? 6:35 -We're gonna go out and we're gonna just swap one instrument, put in a new, fresh instrument so we get good-quality measurement. Data and forecast modeling 6:42 -Philip Orton works on the front line of the effort to measure the rising seas. 6:49 He monitors the Hudson River, gathering present-day data to predict and maybe prevent future catastrophe. 6:56 -We've got a buoy offshore. It's got a SONN, an instrument that has many sensors on it, that's measuring pH, the oxygen, salinity of the water, 7:05 temperature of the water, water elevation... There's instruments all up and down the Hudson. It'll send the data to the Internet 7:11 which we take into our database. We collect the data for the forecast model. Much like with the weather forecast, 7:18 you can merge the best information you have to form the initial conditions in order to launch your next forecast. 7:25 -These gauges help Orton understand which parts of the city are most at risk when the next big storm or hurricane hits. 7:33 ♪♪ After Sandy, Orton's data was used in modeling 7:41 to see what New York would look like with six feet of sea level rise by 2100. Projection for 6ft sea rise in 2100 7:47 -So this is a satellite map showing New York City without any flooding. Shown here is Broad Channel, The Rockaways, Lower Manhattan, 7:55 and over here is Staten Island. If you get six feet of sea-level rise, the everyday average high tide 8:01 is gonna start flooding a lot of neighborhoods. It's high tide in 2100. This is now showing tidal flooding of places like 8:08 South Street Seaport, Lower Manhattan, a lot of flooding around Jamaica Bay, 8:14 also on Staten Island. Hundreds of thousands of people being flooded at that point. 8:20 It's uninhabitable when you start getting flooded so many times per year. That's tidal flooding, but then there's also storm surges. 8:28 We can also look at what 2100 would hold if we had a very severe storm like Hurricane Sandy, 8:34 plus six feet of sea level rise. A much larger percentage of the coastal zone is flooded, 8:40 the West Side of Manhattan, the Tribeca district, Wall Street, Battery Park, Lower East Side. 8:49 -Sandy flooded 51 square miles -- 17% of the city. 8:55 With six feet of sea rise, those numbers would be closer to 100 square miles or about 1/3 of the city underwater. 9:03 -This kind of flooding would be catastrophic. There's massive infrastructural elements 9:09 for a city of 8 million people that are in the flood zones. Transportation system, the tunnels, the subways, 9:16 the electrical system, and of course a lot of these things were flooded just by Hurricane Sandy, so if you envision six feet of sea-level rise, 9:23 then a great deal more is at risk at that point. The whole city could be disabled in this kind of flood scenario. 9:29 It's almost certain if we don't reduce our carbon-dioxide emissions that we'll have sea level rise of that scale 9:35 in the 22nd century. New York City's 300 years old. At this rate, we won't make it to another 300 years. 9:42 ♪♪ -When we designed and built New York, 9:49 we did not think of floods and storms. -New York's century-old subway system The subway system 9:56 is a disturbing example of the challenges the city faces from rising seas and powerful storms. 10:03 The subway moves almost 6 million people every day, the largest transit service in the country, 10:09 with 840 miles of track -- enough to stretch all the way to Chicago. 10:15 But it's now in critical need of maintenance as New York adapts to the perils of climate change. 10:21 -This is the South Ferry station. Water entered actually through this entrance 10:26 and went all the way down the stairs... ...and flooded the entire station. 10:33 There was actually three, four feet of water on the mezzanine. Everybody was surprised that the whole station got flooded. 10:41 Nobody anticipated that much water coming in and actually flooding the whole station. First of all, there was urgency to get service back, 10:50 so there was urgency to get all of the water out, pump everything. There was like... 10:55 7 or 8 million gallons of water that had to be pumped out, and it took weeks to pump it out. 11:01 So, once they pumped out all of the water, then the station was assessed to see what was damaged 11:06 and what had to be done. ♪♪ 11:12 -Joe Lhota is the chairman of the Metropolitan Transit Authority. He says that the city's 14 submerged subway tunnels 11:19 are in jeopardy due to storm surge and rising seas. -The subway system was built 11:26 over about 115 years ago now. And when they opened it, 11:31 I don't think they ever envisioned the rising tides that we're experiencing now in the 21st century. 11:37 Pretty much all of our tunnels were damaged. Not just to the actual rail equipment but to the side of the walls. 11:43 We had South Ferry station here in Lower Manhattan that was pretty much brand-new, completely renovated that was completely destroyed. 11:50 The water went all the way up to the steps, its two stories below ground, it was completely flooded. 11:55 We need to rebuild the system. -Dr. Klaus Jacob is a disaster- risk and climate expert. Geophysicist Klaus Jacob 12:03 In 2011, he released a study that warned it would only take a single superstorm, 12:08 combined with sea-level rise, to flood and destroy the city's most vulnerable subway tunnels. 12:15 -We did the studies in close cooperation with the engineering staff 12:20 of the Metropolitan Transit Authority, whose subdivision runs the subway system. 12:26 Looking not only at the present, but for the 2030s, 2050s, 2080s 12:32 and the end of the century. Our focus really was climate change and how would New York City adapt to that rising sea level 12:42 with storms superimposed on top. Our results showed that the Achilles' heel of New York City 12:50 would be the subway system. We had computed that it would take only about 40 minutes 12:57 to fill whatever can be filled. But if you have six feet of water already in addition, 13:04 a city like New York City has no choice but to take action. 13:11 -The subway is just one of several critical infrastructure assets New York City has to protect 13:17 from rising sea levels and powerful storms. -It's $7- to $8-billion problem. 13:23 It's not just the subways -- we also have numerous bridges and tunnels. We also have the commuter rail lines, 13:28 Metro-North and the Lower Allen railroad that we need to make resilient. Because that's how people get to and from work, 13:35 to and from school. They're the arteries that allow the lifeblood of the metropolitan area to stick together. 13:43 -New York's population is at its highest in history and shows no sign of declining. 13:49 8.6 million people now call the five boroughs home and that population has risen 5.5% since 2010 -- 13:58 leading the state in population growth. -I have looked at the evolution of New York City 14:04 over its 400 years of existence. It has undergone so many mutations. 14:11 I mean, it did not look anything like it looks now. 14:17 Why should it look in 100 years anything like it looks now? -Clues to the future challenges New York City faces 14:25 may be found in its past -- in urban development that started over 300 years ago. NYC's shoreline map over centuries 14:31 -I remember getting a call from Bill not that long after Hurricane Sandy, and he asked if we have maps which show, 14:39 in a really dramatic fashion, how the landfill in New York City had an impact on the severity of the storm. 14:47 -My name is Bill Johnson. In 2012, I was director of the state-wide mapping program, part of the Division of Homeland Security & Emergency Services. 14:56 They were hoping that the maps would help them understand the underlying issues related to the storm. 15:02 And so, we started thinking about how we could help her with this work. 15:09 -My reaction to this kind of request was excitement in that we had means to contribute 15:14 to helping the city become a more resilient place. -We started thinking about overlays of aerial imagery 15:23 with historic maps. -We had all of these maps here in digital format already 15:29 and we had them stretched over the same geographic grid 15:34 so that they lined up when we compared them. -Those were the raw ingredients we needed. We had an accurate representation 15:41 of everything that had changed between 1609 and 2012 as evidenced in an aerial photo. 15:49 So, when we overlay this 1860 map on the 1767, what's immediately apparent is 15:55 that there's a tremendous expansion. Here's the 1767 shoreline I'm tracing with my finger. 16:01 So, all of this from here out to here is new. We overlay that on the modern map of Manhattan, 16:08 and you can see how much of Lower Manhattan is actually constructed on the man-made, reclaimed land. 16:14 -An area which was formerly undeveloped is the scene of a project in which is employment is provided for both skilled and unskilled workers. 16:21 A long bulkhead was built to reclaim land from the waters of the bay. 16:26 -Almost four square miles of modern-day Manhattan is built on landfill added all along the city's coasts. 16:35 -We took the Sandy storm-surge data and overlaid it on top 16:41 to see if there was alignment between the man-made lands and where the flooding occurred from Sandy. 16:48 And what we can see is that it very dramatically aligns with the man-made area. 16:57 What this really reveals is that the flooding from superstorm Sandy 17:02 is largely man-made. The flooding occurred largely as a result 17:10 of 400 years of human activity that basically created a new floodplain. 17:16 And that floodplain is densely filled with modern, urban infrastructure -- 17:21 subway tunnels, power-plants -- and that's where we saw the damage 17:26 from flooding from Sandy. -The reclaimed land Johnson identifies is a critical part of the U.S. economy. 17:33 Banking, finance, technology, communication, insurance -- more Fortune 500 companies have offices here 17:41 than anywhere else on the planet. -We are the financial capital of the country, if not the world, 17:47 we are the center of arts and media. Many of the media companies for this country, if not the world, are headquartered here. 17:54 We have to get it right because of what we mean to the economy of the country and the economy of the world. 17:59 And we need to do better. -Despite dire warnings, 63% of New Yorkers who were under mandatory evacuation 18:08 stay put through Sandy. Many stay because they have no choice. 18:13 -That's typical in a lot of the affordable neighborhoods in New York City, and it's a stark contrast 18:19 to a lot of the other neighborhoods. People just don't have the resources to leave. 18:27 They shelter in place and they're used to sheltering in place during the typical disasters that we've had in New York. 18:33 Where are they gonna go? -The city has created new evacuation zones 18:39 that can accommodate 3 million New Yorkers. -You don't want to put people's lives at risk. 18:44 You have hundreds of thousands of people, if not millions of people affected by the decision to evacuate. 18:50 It is costly as well. You're opening shelters, there's an economic impact but you have to say life safety is the most important thing. 18:58 There's certainly always going to be a challenge with people making that decision -- do they want to leave their homes? 19:03 And the best thing you can do is tell people you have to take this seriously. -But evacuation is a band-aid solution 19:09 for a life-threatening problem -- rising sea levels that will make parts of the city 19:15 permanently uninhabitable, unless innovative engineering can make a difference. 19:25 That takes political will. -My name is Dan Zarrilli. I'm the chief resilience officer 19:31 and the senior director for climate policy and programs here in the mayor's office. There's been a lot of activity to make sure that we are 19:36 more aware of what it means to live by the coast and that sometimes you may get wet 19:42 but we're continuing to invest and make sure that we are able to bounce back quicker from those events and that we are building a stronger New York City 19:48 at the end of this. The vulnerabilities aren't just something that's going to show up in 100 years. They're here, they're now, 19:55 and we need to invest to mitigate those risks and that means that we're looking at a full range of coastal-defense investments. 20:02 We're implementing them, new building code regulations, new zoning code regulations, upgrading our infrastructure. 20:08 -In the search for solutions to save the city, Dan Zarrilli has turned to the private sector. 20:14 -We are not an infrastructure-forward country right now. -Vishaan Chakrabarti 20:19 is one of the architects and urban thinkers who is tackling the problem head on. -The last time we were was under President Eisenhower. 20:26 -The highway construction program initiated by Ike is the biggest peace-time enterprise ever undertaken. 20:32 It will cost tens of billions. -That was the last time this nation moved a quantum leap forward 20:39 in terms of its infrastructure and we haven't done it since. -The elimination of waste spending made a balanced budget possible. -As much as I love New York, 20:46 our biggest problem in my mind is that we have substandard infrastructure that's over 100 years old. 20:52 I think we really need to step back and holistically look at all the infrastructure in the city. Do we have train stations that function properly? 20:59 Do we have subways that can run in these situations? In the world's richest country, 21:04 and the richest city of the world's richest country, are we gonna say that we're not gonna do something about this? 21:12 -The question remains, does New York City really need to spend huge sums on expensive mega-projects 21:18 to protect itself from rising sea levels? The answer may lie in a vault in Massachusetts. 21:24 Historical records reveal evidence of previous mega-storms in New York, 21:29 and researchers look for patterns to determine if they are getting more frequent and worse. -This is the sea-floor-samples lab. 21:36 It's a national archive of all the sediment cores that have been taken over the last several decades. 21:42 -Jeff Donnelly is a senior scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. -There are samples from all over the world. 21:49 Tens of thousands of them. We maintain this archive so that scientists can come and resample cores that may have been taken 21:55 long before they were even born. -These core-sediment samples were taken by scientists in New York, dating back to 1721. 22:03 -One of the things that makes New York especially vulnerable to hurricane strikes is the sort of shape of the coastline there. You've got the bight 22:09 where New York and New Jersey come together. As a storm comes up the eastern seaboard, it's focusing water into that bight 22:15 and causing greater levels of storm surge. -Just like tree rings can tell the story of climate change, 22:22 core-sediment samples offer clear signs of powerful hurricanes across the past 300 years. 22:28 -You can see these really distinctive sand layers here that are deposited within the salt marsh peat 22:34 and it's these layers that tell us about the high-energy event that occurred, so it's hurricane waves and storm surge 22:40 overtopping the beach transporting the beach sand into the salt marsh. 22:45 We already had well-documented the 1821 hurricane but didn't really have a very good modern analogue for which we had modern measurements. 22:52 Hurricane Sandy provided an opportunity to do a comparison with these earlier events. 22:58 We know from the documentary record that the storm surge for 1821 was actually even higher than Sandy. 23:05 It was probably about 14, 15 feet worth of storm surge. The 1821 hurricane hit 23:11 when sea levels were about two-feet lower. -Every century, the city gets slammed. 23:16 -You don't even need the bigger and badder storm than 1821, you have 1821 come back, you've already gotta add two feet to that 23:22 just because of the sea-level rise that's occurred since then. -Donnelly's findings confirm superstorm Sandy was not the exception, but the rule -- 23:30 common to every century. In fact, the storm surge in 1821 23:35 was 1 1/2 times the height and strength of Sandy. -They're more of an order of once every 70, 80, 100 years. 23:42 -New York's population then was just over 120,000 people -- most of whom did not live on the water's edge. 23:49 -In the next century, sea level is forecast to rise at least three more feet, so you can imagine how much more infrastructure and people are at risk 23:56 as every foot sea level rises. -Donnelly's findings confirm 24:02 that New York has always been hit by hurricanes. The next storm is coming, and more people than ever 24:10 will be living along New York's coasts when the city floods. ♪♪ 24:17 This is how New York City's coast looked in 1821, when the last mega-storm before Sandy hit -- 24:24 stark, wild, flat and vulnerable. It's a salt marsh in New Jersey, 20 miles from Manhattan. 24:33 ♪♪ 24:38 -It's interesting to know that sea level goes up and goes down but if you want to correlate it with climate, 24:45 you need to know when. -Horton and his team also use core-sediment samples to research the prehistoric climate of New York. 24:53 But instead of focusing on the patterns of sand layers, they look at microscopic organisms to determine 24:58 if sea levels have risen dramatically in the prehistoric past. -The four meters of sediment represents approximately 25:06 the last 2,000 years of Earth's history. It's a nice sample. 25:13 We take these cores back and we try and record precisely how sea level has changed. 25:20 Has it accelerated? Has it decelerated? And then correlate those with changes in climate. 25:26 ♪♪ 25:33 The microfossils that we're looking at under the microscope are single-cell organisms known as foraminifera. 25:42 Okay, let me have a look. -Horton's looking for microscopic fossils 25:49 that come from the marsh when water is at its highest and lowest. The presence of these fossils 25:54 gives a clear picture of changing sea levels across hundreds of years. -So, based upon the changes in the abundance 26:02 of any individual species tells you how sea level has changed through time. 26:09 -The research shows that for well over 1,500 years, sea levels were stable. 26:14 200 years ago, that changed -- not coincidentally, with the Industrial Revolution. 26:21 -Beginning in the latter part of the 19th century is where sea level accelerated. 26:27 When we correlate climate and sea level, we see a near-perfect relationship -- 26:33 whenever climate warmed, sea levels accelerated. One of the fundamental questions 26:41 that, as climate scientists, we are asked is, is the modern rate of change unprecedented? 26:48 We were able to show that the rates of sea-level rise in the 20th and the 21st century 26:54 had not been seen for the previous 2,000 years. The latest projections predict 27:02 that New York City would receive an upper estimate of sea level of around two meters by 2100, 27:09 or around six feet. We're living in a very, very unusual time. 27:15 We have a clear choice, and therefore we still have hope. But if we don't make urgent action, then all bets are off. 27:24 -With a six-foot sea rise, according to Horton's research, a full 280 square miles of New York will be lost forever, 27:32 a sunken city. 600,000 New Yorkers will lose their homes. 27:38 300,000 jobs will be displaced or lost. 27:43 The poorest will take the hardest hit, with 12,000 public-housing units cut off by the sea. 27:50 The people working the problem on the ground now seek solutions, to rebuild and protect New York for the 22nd century. 28:02 This is what's called, the BIG U. It's an ambitious megaproject that would protect the $500-billion business sector 28:09 in lower Manhattan, the epicenter of the American economy. -My name is Kai Uwe-Bergmann. The Big U seawall project 28:16 -Uwe-Bergmann is an architect who leads the BIG U project. -We have proposed 10 miles of contiguous flood protection 28:24 stretching from West 57th, 58th Streets along the entire coastline 28:30 to the tip where Battery Park is right now, and then back up the East River to the 30s. 28:36 That would protect all of the geography that is currently below the flood line. 28:42 -The BIG U is a massive sea wall, in places 20-feet high, that would protect the most vital business district 28:48 in the U.S. from sea-level rise of up to 15 feet. Its surface would be primarily parkland, 28:55 with sports facilities, playgrounds, and bike and walking paths all along the 10 miles of coastline 29:01 it is designed to protect. -In the case of New York, there was a realization that climate change 29:07 is something that we need to address. You can think of the BIG U as actually a giant gutter, 29:14 because it also is dealing with all of the rain that's hitting the streets while a hurricane event 29:21 or a storm event is happening. The BIG U has also a contiguous bike trail, 29:26 so if it were all built out, all 10 miles, you could ride a bicycle for 10 miles 29:31 and never cross a street. You could say that the coastline of Manhattan is actually going from a working waterfront 29:37 to one that is about leisure, it's about health and well-being and making the waterfront accessible. 29:43 -The BIG U will be realized in stages, the first being a 2.5-mile stretch on the Lower East Side. 29:50 The city has approved the plan, with a budget of $305 million. Trever Holland lives in a neighborhood 29:58 the BIG U would protect. As a lawyer and a resident, he took part in meetings with the developers, 30:04 who say the project would protect Two Bridges from the rising sea. -This neighborhood has planning fatigue. 30:10 We've been to dozens of meetings. Dozens of meetings about what we're gonna do. We're gonna change this, we're gonna add this, 30:16 and a lot of those plans wind up on the shelves. You go through this process of trying to figure out a way to protect the neighborhood 30:22 and you wind up with a nice, big, glossy booklet that sits on a shelf and nothing happens. 30:28 -That's not Holland's only problem with the BIG U. -We fought so long to get access to the waterfront. 30:35 And now, one of the solutions that they're proposing is to basically close it off. We're gonna build 10-foot walls all made of concrete 30:42 and you'll be protected -- Good to go. We've been asking "Is this the only solution? Is there anything else, or are we just looking at walls? 30:49 I mean, what have other cities done?" -Holland's not alone. There are others who think the BIG U 30:55 is a step in the wrong direction. -In Rotterdam, they are designing underground parking garages, 31:01 so if they know a storm is coming, they evacuate the cars and they build that parking garage 31:07 so that it can be a water-holding tank that holds millions of gallons of water. So that water doesn't go out into the community 31:14 and then when the water recedes, they have a mechanism to pump the water out of the parking garage. The parking garage does double duty. 31:20 So, there are ways to design around these problems. I don't think the answer is you're gonna retreat from 31:26 all of Lower Manhattan. We have to figure out how to build things more resiliently. 31:33 -Geophysicist Klaus Jacob has other concerns. -How high do you make those seawalls 31:41 before you are in a prison? And that's not a sustainable solution. 31:49 -That's a dystopian picture. It's just a wall. And most of it, in fact, is just a concrete and rebar wall. 31:58 And I think that going in that direction makes our cities more brittle. 32:03 It's so easy for that wall to break. I mean, I worked in New Orleans for eight years. Walls break. Unexpected things happen, a barge whacks up against it. 32:11 There's always something unexpected. -Hill's greatest concern is that all walls 32:17 eventually have to come down. She believes in building in layers, with every generation contributing to 32:23 the work done by the last. -A wall, that's rigid, that's fixed in place. 32:29 The design is only for that specific location. We should spend that same amount of money to put things in place that can be added to. 32:37 We need to build the foundation for future generations. 32:42 -Urban architect Pippa Brashear agrees that living behind a wall is a future she cannot imagine. 32:48 -It's fundamentally gonna change the culture. Is that the New York City we want to live in? It's not the New York City I chose to live in. 32:54 One of my greatest fears for the future of New York City is that we won't get past that protect question. 33:01 -I'm a little bit of a sceptic in anything that says, "Oh, we're gonna keep the water out over here," because it's gonna go somewhere. 33:08 It was conceived of as a big giant wall. And they might've said, "We're gonna put grass on it so it'll look nice" but it's still a big giant wall. 33:16 This notion that we're just gonna build a giant fence around New York City and keep this from happening, 33:21 is not either practical or, in some ways, ethical. 33:27 -It's anything but a dumb wall. -Kai Uwe-Bergmann welcomes others to come up with a better idea. 33:34 -It is going to be a place that a person can actually go, 33:39 inhabit, use 100% of the time and then be reassured that it's actually protecting them 33:46 against the sea surges. -He says a short-term radical solution 33:52 is better than none at all. -I think the biggest risk is not doing anything. Many of these communities have heard repeatedly 34:00 that something would be done, and I think that the biggest fear is that another storm event 34:06 would come and flood them out of their homes again and they have to deal with the loss. Broad Channel, a residential island in Queens 34:14 -Broad Channel is a little island in Queens, in the middle of Jamaica Bay. 34:21 It is a tiny place. I don't think anybody ever heard of it... unless you live in, you know, in the area. 34:28 I have talked to a lot of people that live, you know, in Manhattan and they have no idea what Broad Channel is. 34:34 I've been here, you know, since I'm four years old. The same neighbors I had as growing up are the same neighbors I have today. 34:40 My wife was born in Broad Channel also. Her whole family's from the town. ♪♪ 34:51 -For years, Bassetti lived in a world that somehow escaped change. Then, about a decade ago, 34:57 high tides flooded the streets, even on sunny days. -You just get used to it. 35:03 The high tide comes up, I gotta get my daughter to school. "All right. Get on my back," and you piggy-back her up to the corner to get her to school on time. 35:10 This was a full-moon high tide. 35:16 This picture is one of my favorites. Day I was taking my son home from the hospital. He was just born. He was three days old. 35:22 When you live in Broad Channel, you take off your shoes and you carry him down the block. That is total Broad Channel-living right there. 35:32 -Superstorm Sandy turned the inconvenience into a catastrophe. -You couldn't stop it. 35:39 There's nothing that could stop that water from coming in. 35:44 -Bassetti and his family evacuated to Brooklyn... 35:51 ...and returned two days later. -So, when I finally get to my house I go, 35:58 "Well, this ain't that bad." Well, it didn't get bad until we started doing the work, you know. 36:04 First, all right, let's start throwing out everything that's wet, you know, let's empty out underneath the sinks, underneath the closets, let's get rid of these couches. 36:12 ♪♪ -By the time they are done, there is nothing left to save. 36:21 Bassetti joined the city's Build It Back program. With a whopping $2.2-billion budget, 36:26 Build It Back encourages homeowners and businesses to rebuild higher and stronger, 36:31 more resilient against the rising seas. The city has replaced over 1,400 homes, 36:37 repaired and reimbursed 6,500 more with about 1,000 remaining under construction. 36:44 -Build It Back is raising the home for me. They're raising the house 11 feet from where it started from, 36:50 which would put me a few feet above that national flood line. I'm hoping I'm prepared enough. 36:57 I'm hoping my house is raised high enough where the water comes in and I'm not affected. 37:03 But I... Who knows? It's Mother Nature. You can't predict what she's gonna do. 37:09 -Frank is one of thousands who are determined to defend. He'll never leave. 37:15 -Never even crossed my mind. This was a great place to grow up, and I want my kids to have the same environment. 37:22 The house behind me is the house that I own. -But there was a second option -- "managed retreat." 37:29 New York City and State also encouraged people to stop investing in flood-prone areas 37:36 and leave the land to revert to its natural state. 600 homeowners took this buy-out including Frank Moszczynski. 37:45 -Ocean Breeze was pretty much fantastic. 37:50 It really was. It was paradise. I miss everything about it, most is the people that we lost. 37:58 -Two of Moszczynski's neighbors died here during superstorm Sandy. -It was the ideal spot to put something just to say, 38:06 "Hey, we'll never forget ya." Both in their 80s, pillars in their community, 38:12 great people, and just not supposed to die this way. 38:19 We had a typical white picket fence, front porch right here, 38:26 and my house would be from right here, on back. 38:31 Paradise 364 days a year, until the day the storms came. 38:37 My house still had about three feet of water in it. It was still on the foundation, 38:43 but it had been completely submerged. So, it was... 38:49 devastation. I did go inside, everything was turned upside down. 38:55 And I knew there was gonna be nothing, nothing at all savable. 39:00 And that's when it really hit me. 39:05 Three hours and we don't own anything. One of the neighboring areas on the east shore 39:11 started talk of a buy-out. One day I received a call from the governor's representative, 39:20 "Congratulations, you were very successful... your area has the option of the New York State buy-out." 39:27 -Homeowners received full market value for their houses in exchange for leaving. -They took the house down and as you can see, 39:35 we're standing here and there's just grass growing right now. 39:40 It's doing what it was supposed to -- going back to nature, and nature is slowly reclaiming it. And the animals are coming back, too. 39:49 Some people decided to stay. You know what? 39:54 It's America, so they have choice. If they wanna put themselves in that predicament, 40:01 and their family, that's their choice. -One bold engineering project 40:08 is giving the coastal communities of Staten Island hope. 40:14 -What if we just look at this a whole new way, look at the problem a new way and look for new solutions? Offshore breakwaters 40:21 -Pippa Brashear is an urban planner and landscape architect. She works with a team that believes the answer 40:27 is to stop trying to fight the sea, but to learn to live with it and even harness it to do good, 40:33 not harm. -The design project that ultimately came out of it was our Living Breakwaters project. 40:39 The project is located on the southern tip of Staten Island. It was really pummeled by waves during Sandy. 40:48 Our Living Breakwaters project, it's a system of offshore breakwaters. Each of the individual breakwaters range 40:54 from about 300-feet long to 450-feet long and they are spaced along the shoreline 41:02 to really protect it from the most damaging waves. The largest breakwaters that are positioned to really knock down 41:09 those large storm waves, they have to be tall enough that they're still peaking above the top of the water when 41:15 you have those really elevated surge levels like Sandy. And so those crest elevations are at about 14 feet 41:20 above main sea level. -Rather than a continuous sea wall, the breakwaters are a series of raised surfaces 41:27 that slow storm surge. It's an old concept, but the ecological element is a new twist. 41:34 -Much of the breakwaters will be made from stone, but we're also using these bio-enhanced concrete armor units 41:41 to help jumpstart the ecology. The chemical content of the concrete has been adjusted to attract organisms. 41:48 This is a scale model of one. It's about half the size of what the actual armor units will be, 41:53 four feet by four feet. One of the premises that we had was we have to actually restore the environment. 42:01 Historic habitats, wetlands, oyster reefs have been decimated. Can we recreate that complex aquatic habitat, 42:09 to really build back this environment? -I think the Living Breakwaters project is great. 42:17 It's something flexible. If the rocks don't work right there, you move the rocks or you make a new pile of rocks. 42:23 Those strategies we can actually do and we can export them to other cities. There are opportunities and, you know, 42:29 there always gonna be surprises, like oysters on those breakwaters. Well, when the ocean is more acid, 42:35 I don't know about oysters, but something will live on there. -People are looking for ways to buy time. 42:42 -I'm not sure we can reverse it, but can we slow it down? Yes, I think we can slow it down. 42:48 At least as far as the subway system and our commuter rails, I'm committed to make them as resilient as possible 42:55 for what we can expect over the next 100 to next 200 years. -Right now we have about 104 subway entrances Marine doors for subway tunnels 43:03 that we find that are critical facilities that are in the floodplain. We use flex gates, marine doors. 43:11 -I call them submarine doors. They basically close each entranceway. They get locked in place, they're very heavy doors, 43:19 each one weighs about 3,500 pounds. -These can be deployed in relatively quick time 43:26 to prevent water from entering the subway system. These are stop logs. What happens is, these two beams get locked in place 43:35 with these pins. They get locked in place and then as these logs are stacked, 43:41 the pins slide into this beam and as they get stacked to the top... 43:50 ...this whole area then becomes watertight. -Another innovation is an inflatable plug 43:56 made of Kevlar and waterproof fabric. The plugs blow up like balloons to block tunnels against flooding. 44:02 Made from the same materials as the airbags on the Mars rover, strong enough to cushion the spacecraft 44:08 if it lands on rocks, these tough balloons fill up with 35,000 gallons of air in just three minutes. 44:15 But the airbags need to be perfectly packed and deployed to provide a watertight seal. 44:20 -I don't think much of the plugs, those round balls that get filled up with air that will plug it and all of that. 44:26 You need something a little bit better than some kind of plastic or polymer filled with air to be able to block the water. 44:33 As we all know, water is extremely strong and powerful. 44:38 -And at $400,000 each, the city decides they are too expensive to plug all 14 of their under-river subway tunnels. 44:46 -It's very, very important that we recognize that climate change is real. And if you don't want to recognize 44:52 that climate change is real, we do have to recognize the sheer fact that water seems to be rising. 44:57 So, what do we do to mitigate that and what do we do to mitigate the risks that are involved in that so we can continue to operate? 45:03 Are we better off than others? It's hard for me to know because I've not done a comparison, 45:09 but I do know that we're a lot better off today than we were five years ago. Flood-resistant building construction 45:15 -The new Whitney Museum in the Meatpacking District appears to be one of the most flood-resistant museums 45:21 in the country and perhaps the world. It was built for the future, 45:26 designed to be resilient against rising sea levels and storm surge. Its loading dock is protected by a waterproof flood door, 45:34 designed and built by naval engineers. The outer concrete wall was reinforced 45:39 to become 100% waterproof. Like the subway, the museum also has a "stoplog system" -- 45:46 a deployable barricade that can be installed in just eight hours in advance of an approaching storm. 45:54 That doubles Sandy's storm surge height in Lower Manhattan -- but it's in line with future projections. 46:01 Urban architect Vishaan Chakrabarti believes that the survival of New York depends on designs like the Whitney. 46:07 It comes down to new buildings that can endure the inevitable rising water that's coming its way. 46:14 -You make sure the building can flood, which means that you get all of the vulnerable mechanical equipment 46:20 out of the basement. -We're in the west tower of the American Copper Buildings 46:25 here on the East Side of Manhattan. This building is designed around the 100-year floodplain. 46:33 Our elevators and our mechanical systems, our power service, our pumps... Those are all above that elevation. 46:41 -You make sure that there's a generator in the building. It can't power the entire building, but it can power the elevators, 46:46 it can power at least one outlet in every apartment so you can charge a cell phone, get information and so forth. 46:52 Have at least enough light to live, maybe keep a refrigerator running. -We're up here on the 48th floor of the west tower. 47:00 This should be our penthouse apartment. Sweeping views all over the city. 47:05 King of the world type of apartment. Instead, we have two megawatts of emergency power. 47:13 We decided we're gonna put the generators up here because by sacrificing the square feet up here, 47:19 even though we'd be renting them for upwards of $130 or $150 a foot, we figured by not using those square feet as an apartment, 47:28 we make all the rest of the square feet in the building that much more valuable. Even when there's no commercial power in this building, 47:35 you would be able to live here. -Those basic things can actually dramatically change 47:43 what happens during a storm, because if big buildings are equipped to do that, you then don't have this massive exodus of people 47:51 who are trying to get out of their homes with flooded streets, first responders, 47:56 all the other things that are happening simultaneously with that crisis. It's not a very high-tech set of solutions. 48:02 It's actually a fairly low-tech set of solutions. -The lobby is built above the estimated high water mark 48:09 for flooding. Even so, the building is designed to flood. And when the water recedes, 48:14 the damage is minimal and residents can go right back to their lives. -What's unique about this lobby is the material selection. 48:23 The floor is stone, the walls are concrete, steel, and stone. The portals are all steel 48:30 and the wood feature that we wanted in the lobby, is set off the wall so that it's actually a vented system. 48:36 So if it ever did get wet, we wouldn't be doing any sort of demolition and replacement. 48:42 The expectation is that eventually something will happen, and the building will get wet. Domino Park in Brooklyn 48:48 -Vishaan Chakrabarti has his own megaproject under construction in Brooklyn, one of the most ambitious and resilient plans 48:55 in the history of the five boroughs. -Domino Park is a 3-million-square-foot 49:01 new neighborhood that's being built on the waterfront in Brooklyn. -Domino is a mixed-used development 49:06 with 2,800 condo units, 1/4 of them affordable housing. Its main feature is a huge, six-acre park, 49:13 a quarter mile along the waterfront. -We just went out to the community and we were very open and honest with people and said, you know, "Look, 49:19 this needs to be more resilient." And so, one of the first moves we had made 49:25 during the master-planning process was to pull the buildings back from the water and actually make a bigger park. 49:31 That resulted in more climate resilience in the long term because that park has a tremendous amount 49:37 of porous surface -- grass, plant material that will take on water. So what happens is, when a storm hits, 49:44 it will both slow the energy of the storm and absorb like a sponge a lot of the water 49:50 that's coming into the community. It's also designed with a natural grade of the land so when the storm recedes, 49:56 the water will recede back into the river more quickly. -The buildings will also have office and retail space, 50:03 so many residents can stay put through a storm surge. -Domino is it's an interesting model to really think about 50:09 how you build in the world that we're gonna be living in in the next 100 years or so in terms of flooding and sea level rise. 50:17 -Developers and the City now work together to harden New York against the rising sea. 50:23 This might prevent incidents such as the transformer explosion in Lower Manhattan, during Sandy... -Oh [bleep]! 50:30 -...that left 200,000 people without power, heat or light. -Our electric grid now has the benefit of 50:35 an additional billion dollars of hardening that has been placed into the grid to make sure the lights stay on the next time. 50:41 We're dealing with a very complex set of new projects. They've never been done before. First of its kind in such a dense urban environment 50:48 and we're moving them as quickly as we can. I'm hopeful about New York's future because of the ability that New Yorkers have shown 50:54 to adapt to any number of challenges over its nearly 400-year history. We're gonna be here, we're gonna work with the threats, 51:01 we're gonna adapt and this is gonna be a thriving city. -Many will defend, 51:06 but some will be forced to retreat. That is New York City's inevitable future. 51:12 -I don't think there's a one-size-fits-all answer to whether we should build or not in the floodplain. 51:17 There's hundreds of thousands of people in New York City that live in floodplains. And I think there are probably some cases where 51:24 it just simply doesn't make sense, where it's not just a floodplain, it's a highly vulnerable floodplain. Retreat, in that instance, might make sense. 51:31 -What this means for the future, it means seawall or levy protections, storm-surge barriers. 51:36 Or the city could encourage more building in population on higher ground and do things to try to discourage 51:42 or buy people out who are in these low-lying flooded areas. -There are some clear statistics out there 51:48 that for every dollar we invest in risk reduction that there's a $4 avoided future cost. 51:54 Sandy was a $19-billion event in terms of damages and lost economic activity. 51:59 From the risks of climate change, that same event in the 2050s could be a $90-billion event. 52:05 -I think we have to prepare for the unexpected and what that means is, how do you create a city 52:11 that can recover from any number of tough things happening to it, whether it's a flood or a tornado or a terrorist attack. 52:19 Cities are vulnerable, cities have always been vulnerable. Cities also have this extraordinary way 52:24 of being resilient and building back. And so to me, it's always about the basics -- 52:30 mobility, power, water. 52:36 Fixing this is not rocket science. Right? It's simply a question of will. 52:44 -Urban engineering will be the determining factor in just how New York faces its next great challenge. 52:52 It's a transformation that has to happen if it is to survive, and even thrive, when the water comes. 52:59 -We have the situation that about 1 million more people are expected to move to New York City 53:08 by the year 2030. In addition, waterfront is still considered 53:15 the most desirable real estate, which is a notion from the past 53:22 that doesn't hold for the future. -If we're really going to adapt to climate change, 53:27 it's about behavior change, it's about us all thinking about living with water differently. 53:33 And being willing to change and adapt over time. -This is our home, and we want to keep it our home 53:40 and we want it to be a home for our children and our grandchildren as well. So, now's the time to start dealing with the problem. 53:46 -And I think if we do that, this city, which is one of the greatest cities in the world, 53:51 will continue to be for a long, long time. 54:00 ♪♪ 54:31 -Major funding for "Sinking Cities" is provided by Dr. P. Roy and Diana T. Vagelos, 54:37 with additional funding from Sue and Edgar Wachenheim III, and The Marc Haas Foundation 54:42 "Sinking Cities" is also supported by the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, and by viewers like you. 54:49