ISSUE SPOTLIGHT / GREEN NEW YORK TOP 10 INFRASTRUCTURE AND ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES: A CHECKLIST FOR NEW YORK CITY’S NEXT MAYOR
By CHRISTOPHER RIZZO
M
ayor Michael Bloomberg created a blizzard of new environmental and infrastructure initiatives in his 12 years in office. New York City’s next mayor will face countless decisions about these initiatives, many of which are catalogued in the administration’s 2007 sustainability plan, PlaNYC, and in progress reports published each year. Environmental attorney Christopher Rizzo lays out what he believes are the 10 most critical issues, in order of civic priority. Three of them—climate change resiliency, protection of the drinking water supply and creation of new and cleaner energy sources—are critical to the city’s future, while seven other issues are still fundamentally important to the city’s viability.
CLIMATE CHANGE RESILIENCY Before Superstorm Sandy hit New York City a year ago, Mayor Bloomberg was already focused on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and the city’s contributions to climate change. Chief among his initiatives is PlaNYC’s goal of reducing the city’s emissions by 30 percent by 2030, which the city is well on its way to achieving. But the 2007 PlaNYC contained this eerie premonition of Sandy: “The sobering images of Hurricane Katrina still haunt us … for many New Yorkers, the idea of a similar catastrophe affecting our own city is unthinkable.” That kind of storm is, of course, now very “thinkable,” and the city must focus not only reducing emissions but also on adaptation. 24 OCTOBER 21, 2013 | cityandstateny.com
In June the Bloomberg administration released its 400-page report on renovating coastal areas to be more resilient to sea level rise and storms. The report contains a laundry list of improvements to buildings, utilities, gas supplies, transportation and social services during emergencies. But the most important and expensive recommendations relate to rebuilding shorelines. They include raising coastal elevations, reducing wave action and stopping storm surges through floodwalls, levees and surge barriers. The most comprehensive approach—three floodgates at the Arthur Kill, Narrows and Hell Gate—has been written off as too expensive and difficult. So the next mayor must figure out how to build dozens of smaller projects like levees around lower Manhattan, floodgates at South Brooklyn inlets and berms in the Rockaways. These will require complicated environmental reviews under laws that strongly discourage in-water construction. And they will require strategic decisions about the use of eminent domain.
DRINKING WATER New York City’s three reservoir systems (the Catskill, Croton and Delaware) have adequate capacity, especially if water efficiency continues to improve. But the city has been granted a filtration avoidance determination by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for the Catskill and Delaware systems, one of few U.S. cities to receive one. In 2007 the EPA granted the city a 10-year waiver under the U.S. Safe Drinking Water Act from filtering its drinking water in exchange for a commitment to aggressive protection of these two watersheds. If the EPA were to revoke the filtration waiver in 2017, the city would need to construct large filtration plants at a cost of many billions of dollars. For example, the city is now completing a $3.2 billion water filtration plant for the Croton system, which supplies a mere 10 percent of the water supply and does not have a filtration waiver. The alternative for the next mayor will be to continue to buy and protect land in the watersheds and create innovate farming, forestry and sewage treatment practices for nearby residents. This effort must continue and expand alongside existing efforts to complete the third water tunnel (which is now operational in Manhattan), explore new sources of drinking water and restrict hydrofracking
in the city’s upstate watershed. ENERGY PlaNYC predicts that New York City’s electricity demand will rise by 30 percent by 2030, requiring new sources of electricity. By contrast, in 2013 the New York Independent System Operator predicted adequate capacity through at least 2020. Regardless, the likely closure of aging and polluting oil-fired power plants and potential closure of the Indian Point nuclear power plant creates uncertainty that must be addressed. The city may need several new power plants by 2030 or equivalent capacity from outside the region. The state regulatory process to authorize these new power sources requires years of advance planning. In 2011 the state Legislature passed a new Article X of the Public Service Law that gives the state Public Service Commission exclusive jurisdiction over the approval of virtually all new power plants. With most authority concentrated at the state level, the next mayor must continue to be a strong advocate in Albany at the commission’s licensing proceedings that impact the city. He must advocate in Washington, D.C., for a renewal of a federal renewable energy tax credit, which provides a vital boost to renewable power generators but expires at the end of 2013. The city also needs modern and more resilient energy and communication infrastructure including cleaner electricity sources (e.g., solar); more access to natural gas; and a modern system of fiber optic cables that can resist inundation.
least in developers’ eyes). The next mayor must be creative in solving this problem and focus on better financial incentives for affordable housing near transit and other amenities; reuse of vacant NYCHA and MTA land; remediation and reuse of contaminated urban properties; and creating flood-resilient housing in coastal areas like “Arverne by the Sea” in the Rockaways. PARKS The challenge with New York City’s ample park system is in finding adequate funds for maintenance. Bloomberg leaves a great challenge for the next mayor because the park system is substantially larger than when he took office in 2002 and includes costly waterfront parks like Hudson River Park, Brooklyn Bridge Park, Governors Island and the East River Esplanade. While each of these parks is intended to be financially selfsufficient to one degree or another, the laws governing them create significant restrictions on revenue generation. Although questioned by some candidates in the recent primary elections, public-private partnerships for parks are inherently legal and include conservancies, park improvement districts, transfers of development rights, tax-increment financing and park concessions. The next mayor must explore these ideas more aggressively while still finding maintenance funding in the traditional budget process.
NEIGHBORHOOD PRESERVATION AFFORDABLE HOUSING New York University’s Furman Center estimated in a recent report that “well over half of New York City renters were rent burdened, spending more than 30 percent of their gross monthly income on rent and utilities.” According to PlaNYC, 64 percent of New Yorkers who move away cite unaffordable housing as a factor. In order for the city to care for low-income residents and retain a middle class, the affordable housing problem must be solved. While there are many components of the affordable housing crisis in New York City, it is in large part a land use matter. There is limited developable land in the city, and what exists is often far from mass transit, in flood zones or not financially viable (at
Zoning is a competition between protecting quality of life and creating land value. With 120 neighborhood rezonings in 12 years, the City Planning Commission has indisputably taken those themes to heart. Most of the rezonings focused on reducing permitted zoning density to protect community character. Combined with this effort, the Landmarks Preservation Commission created hundreds of new landmarks. Even with these unprecedented preservation efforts, however, residents want more zoning protections and landmarks. As the Real Estate Board of New York recently announced, developers want fewer. The next mayor must balance these two interests while planning for the anticipated 1 million new residents in the city by 2030.