M Focus on: Crisis Management
River city renovates shoreline for safety, commerce
By DANI MESSICK | The Municipal
A city in New York is hoping recent renovations to its seawall will benefit the local economy in conjunction with other marine-related projects. In 2011, Hurricane Irene devastated the coastline of the Hudson River, specifically in Troy, a historic city where the seawall hadn’t been renovated since its original construction over 100 years ago. “We are not an area that typically gets hurricanes; it just happens that it went in this direction,” said Monica Kurzejeski, deputy mayor for the city of Troy. “What happened with Irene is it came in through the Gulf and traveled through the Midwest. It was just significant rainfall. We’re more known for nor’easters, where we get a bunch of snowfall. Unfortunately, we also live in a mountainous area; we have the (Adirondack Mountains … ) and a lot of that mountain stream and flow with all their peaks comes down, and all those tributaries go into the Hudson River so it’s all an ecosystem, and it was kind of like the perfect storm. It was a time of year where we typically wouldn’t get flooding.” The whole system is designed to accommodate that, but as a riverfront community, the city boasts plenty of flood zones. 32 THE MUNICIPAL | SEPTEMBER 2021
This rendering depicts the finalized Troy, N.Y., seawall project, which will not only improve safety but also encourage river tourism. (Photo provided by the city of Troy, N.Y.)
“We’ve always had the Hudson River so we’ve grown accustomed to working with it and respecting its water. You try to make your built form be able to accommodate that so you have little damage when the water recedes and you’re able to clean up quickly, and that’s really where our minds are when we’re looking at redeveloping this community. We are just as affected by tides as the ocean is here. We had buildings very close to or adjacent to the Hudson River that suffered a lot of damage from the flood itself,” said Kurzejeski. “When they did some inspections, they found that some of the area below the water had been scoured out; there was one area that actually tilted and suffered movement.” According to Kurzejeski, some of the caverns were as much as 20 feet deep and 10 feet tall, and divers were brought in to do underwater concrete work. Through the help of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the New York State Department’s Waterfront Revitalization Initiative, the city rebuilt portions of the seawall as well as anchored the old seawall, designed a new marina,
