Post-Hurricane Sandy Study To Strengthen Coney Island Flood Defenses

When Hurricane Sandy hit New York City, Coney Island was one of the worst flooded communities. In anticipation of future climate change events, the New York City Economic Development Corporation, in partnership with the Mayor's Office of Recovery and Resiliency, commissioned Arcadis North America to prepare a study of Coney Island Creek and the surrounding areas to develop recommendations for improved flood protection that minimizes environmental impact, improves water quality and enhances community recreation while addressing the dangers posed by hurricanes and climate change.

A video released by Arcadis detailing the results of studies on how to make Coney Island and its nearly 46,000 residents more resilient against future flooding is available:

Walk through the project by watching this short video and learn of the proposed solutions suggested by Arcadis.

“In an effort to make Coney Island peninsula more resilient, we evaluated how we can enhance the shoreline to protect the community from the impacts that are associated with climate change, such as sea level rise, in addition to how we protect the peninsula from a hurricane event such as Superstorm Sandy,” said Roni Deitz, Arcadis coastal resiliency expert.

Proposed flood mitigation measures include the following:

• Constructing an in-water tidal barrier to maintain tidal flow, water quality, and circulation,
• Creating ecological diversity through habitat enhanced bulkhead designs, natural stormwater treatment areas, and coastal wetlands restoration,
• Enhancing views to waterfront and distant harbor view through elevated trails featuring attractive landscaping,
• Enhancing connectivity between neighborhoods with walking berms that cross the creek.

The Arcadis proposal provides the following benefits:

• Delivers a flood protection system that reduces risk for 45,800 residents and 6,000 buildings, including residential, retail, commercial, and industrial, in an area containing 1,200 businesses employing over 12,100 people,
• Small construction footprint merges green and gray infrastructure to reduce impact to existing site conditions including water quality, ecology, and drainage while increasing community recreational opportunities and ecological diversity,
• Supports local business/retail development through reduced flood risk and decreased flood protection insurance rates and building costs,
• Involvement of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for project funding.

“Many of the flood protection strategies that were studied were targeted at protecting the community against really low frequency storm events such as a superstorm. However, there’s a great opportunity to layer-in secondary benefits to enhance the quality of life for residents during the times when it’s not storming. This can be new community infrastructure such as a new pedestrian path connecting existing park spaces.” Deitz refers to the Creek parks—Kaiser Park on the south side, Six Diamonds Park and Calvert Vaux Park on the north side of the Creek. The design embraces dual-purpose flood control infrastructure and includes walking trails that connect the parks. The infrastructure will also include sloped shoreline areas to encourage plant life and habitat creation.

The study, summarizing the proposed solutions as well as the innovative approaches undertaken, including community outreach activities, can be downloaded here.

About Arcadis
Arcadis is the leading global design & consultancy firm for natural and built assets. Applying our deep market sector insights and collective design, consultancy, engineering, project and management services, we work in partnership with our clients to deliver exceptional and sustainable outcomes throughout the lifecycle of their natural and built assets. We are 27,000 people active in over 70 countries that generate more than $3.8B in revenues. For more information, visit www.arcadis.com.