Last week, New York City experienced another round of flash flooding thanks to a violent downpour, highlighting a thorny question: When do you harden infrastructure against stormwater, and when do you work with it?
An adaptation-minded property insurance system means safer, healthier, more resilient communities and economies that can both prepare for and recover from climate disasters in an affordable, sustainable, equitable way.
3% of U.S. GDP is spent every year on preparing for and repairing from disasters.
Last week, New York City experienced another round of flash flooding thanks to a violent downpour, highlighting a thorny question: When do you harden infrastructure against stormwater, and when do you work with it?
Last week, just after the thirteenth anniversary of Hurricane Sandy, New York City experienced another round of flash flooding thanks to a violent downpour. The record-breaking rain came down at about 6 inches per hour, highlighting a thorny question: When do you harden infrastructure against stormwater, and when do you work with it? According to a New York Times analysis, nearly 30% of the city’s land mass could face significant flooding by 2080.
In its current iteration, the city's stormwater system is meant to accommodate 1.75 inches of rain per hour; according to the Times, storms have exceeded that rate in three out of the past five years.
"So much of our infrastructure was built for a world and a climate that doesn't exist anymore," says Daniel Zarrilli, who served as the city's first Chief Resilience Officer from 2016 to 2018. After Sandy's devastating 14-foot storm surge, Zarrilli helped create a $20 billion adaptation program that drew money from federal disaster recovery grants, state programs, municipal budgets, and utility investments. This "sources and uses" capital stack, as Zarrilli’s team put it, aligned multiple funding streams toward reinforcing critical hospital, subway, and utility infrastructure across the city.
Fortification is half the solution; the other half requires working with water rather than trying to wall it out. Speaking to the Times, landscape ecologist Eric Sanderson explained that in New York, the areas currently facing the highest risk of flooding overlap almost exactly with the city's historical wetlands.
Manhattan's contemporary flood maps are essentially X-rays of a buried ecological landscape, with the springs, streams, and wetlands that once absorbed rainfall now plugged and sealed under pavement.
The pattern repeats across American cities with startling consistency. Houston's catastrophic flooding follows the contours of an ancient river network and filled-in prairie wetlands. Chicago’s basements and sewers overflow in the footprint of a drained swamp. San Francisco's Mission Bay—once a tidal marsh—floods during heavy rains.
Reconnecting with lost waterways is becoming a key part of New York's resilience arsenal. The city's new plan for the flood-prone Jewel Streets neighborhood unearths portions of Spring Creek, giving floodwater a place to go as it heads toward Jamaica Bay. Staten Island's successful Bluebelt Program, funded partially by a Hurricane Sandy recovery grant, has built and preserved natural drainage corridors.
The city's dual approach—hardening critical assets and restoring ecological systems—offers a blueprint for cities nationwide. But “there's a lot that hasn't been done yet, that needs to be done, to protect people and upgrade infrastructure and coastal protections,” Zarrilli says.
It’s a puzzle for newly elected New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani to consider as he inherits a city designed for a milder century. Mamdani’s campaign has been relatively quiet on flood protection, although his proposal to turn 50 public schools into year-round resilience hubs—shelters during heat waves and flooding—suggests he knows that storms are coming. With some 80,000 homes projected to flood over the next 15 years, the city will have to move fast.
Read our full interview with Daniel Zarrilli here.
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There has been 60% more rainfall during the heaviest rain events in the Northeast since 1958.
Source: Climate Central and the Fifth National Climate Assessment
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The Epicenter helps decision makers understand climate risks and discover viable resilience solutions. The Epicenter is an affiliated publication of The Resiliency Company, a 501(c)3 nonprofit dedicated to inspiring and empowering humanity to adapt to the accelerating challenges of the next 100+ years.
An adaptation-minded property insurance system means safer, healthier, more resilient communities and economies that can both prepare for and recover from climate disasters in an affordable, sustainable, equitable way.
3% of U.S. GDP is spent every year on preparing for and repairing from disasters.
The Epicenter editors recently interviewed Daniel Zarrilli, former Chief Resilience Officer for New York City and current Chief Climate & Sustainability Officer at Columbia University, about his work during the post-Hurricane Sandy recovery effort.
Each time the federal government closes, it reinforces a simple truth: the center can no longer hold. The work of building resilient infrastructure and communities must now happen locally.
