SANDY’S
DEVASTATION
planning and zoning and trigger
building code requirements.
Despite the Bloomberg administration’s studies of climate
change, however, it dissented from
key substantive recommendations
made by the the New York State
Sea Level Rise Task Force in 2010
for planning development.
Perhaps most critically in light
of Sandy, the report said the state
should seek to “reduce incentives
that increase or perpetuate development in high risk locations.”
The report advised making state
funding for shoreline development contingent on planning for
sea level rise and storm surges.
Projects would be subject to review by the Department of Environmental Conservation and the
Department of State.
But the city objected, citing
“additional burdens to the regulatory process by extending the level of review and approval by the
State in local planning efforts.”
Changes to state law were premature, said a letter from Adam
Freed, then the deputy director of
New York City Mayor’s Office of
Long-Term Planning and Sustainability, especially before the state
did a cost-benefit analysis of stopping growth on the waterfront:
HUFFINGTON
12.02.12
“As written, the draft recommendations could result in a policy
of disinvestment in and promote
relocation from existing urban areas,” he wrote. “This would have
dire economic and environmental consequences for the city and
the state. There are over 215,000
people living within the FEMA 1
percent chance flood zone in New
York City and more than 185,000
jobs present in this zone.”
“Bloomberg has been out in
front of these issues well before
almost anybody in the country,
but still they pushed back,” recalled Pete Grannis, the DEC commissioner under Gov. David Paterson who co-chaired the study.
The report, he noted, looked at
both the long-term issue of climate change and the short-term
risk from storm surges associated
with events like hurricanes.
Some of the city’s objections
were rooted in standard jurisdictional concerns about having more
interference from the state, Grannis said. But he said the “huge,
huge dollar signs” associated with
the report’s recommendations and
the “tension” between the goals of
development and environmental
protection also played a role.
When the task force made its
many recommendations, they essentially landed with a thud. Newly elected Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s