Adams admin talks longer-term climate resiliency measures

New York City’s most recent bout of heavy rainfall and flooding prompted questions about the city’s preparedness and communication protocols for future extreme weather events, particularly amid criticism that Mayor Eric Adams communicated about the flood risks too slowly. 

But somewhat lost in the immediate aftermath of the flooding last month was a conversation about what the city is doing in the longer term to build resiliency for the storms that will continue to challenge its infrastructure.

“We are a city surrounded by water,” City Council Member Shekar Krishnan said at a council oversight hearing on Wednesday. “The necessity for New York to be ever-prepared for these increasingly harsh storms is growing more and more important.”

Adams administration officials appeared before the Committees on Environmental Protection and Parks at that hearing to answer questions about their longer term resiliency efforts. While city officials testified that work is underway – from installing storm sewers in Southeast Queens to tree canopy expansion – they said that true resilience will be costly, and that the city doesn’t have time on its side.

“The climate is changing faster than our infrastructure can keep up,” Chief Climate Officer and Commissioner of the Department of Environmental Protection Rohit Aggarwala said at the hearing, referring to that conclusion as “one of our sad realities.” Among the needs on the city’s to-do list now, he said, is figuring out how to make its own processes faster in order to undertake more projects at once.

In the meantime, areas like Southeast Queens are still flooding despite ongoing investments there. Asked by Council Member Selvena Brooks-Powers, who represents the area, whether there are any plans to expedite the city’s investments in storm sewer expansion there given more frequent extreme weather events, Aggarwala said that there are not any specific plans right now to accelerate that work.

Among other projects currently underway in the city, Aggarwala said, are investments in green infrastructure projects like rain gardens and permeable pavements, the “far from complete” FloodNet monitoring system, and the East Side Coastal Resiliency project, which Aggarwala said is closer to completion than to initiation. 

But renewed attention on the city’s resiliency work also comes as the Adams administration is pursuing steep citywide budget cuts and has implemented a hiring freeze. Asked by several council members how those cuts would harm ongoing projects – or the need for new investments – Aggarwala said that stormwater resilience is not subject to the planned budget cuts. But DEP is subject to the hiring freeze that began at the beginning of the month, along with a freeze on Other Than Personal Services funding, and is working with the Office of Management and Budget on exemptions to those freezes for important roles and categories.

The Parks Department, which was also present at the hearing, is subject to the budget cuts, but Assistant Commissioner Marit Larson said that she was not prepared to speak about how they will affect operations before more detailed plans come out with the November budget modification. 

Krishan, who chairs the Parks Department, said that investments in parks will be crucial for the city’s climate resiliency, and amplified a longstanding call from environmental advocates for 1% of the city’s budget to go to parks. “We will not have a parks system with the resources that reflect that value until we achieve at least 1% of our city budget for parks,” he said.