City jacking up streets of Broad Channel

From the NY Times:

“We do not care about budgets; we are taxpaying people,” said John Heaphy, 69, a lifelong resident of the area, Broad Channel, Queens, which is built on a marsh that juts into the bay. “From the lowest politician to the governor’s office, we’ve been begging, please help us.”

Now, the city is doing just that, budgeting $22 million to try to save the neighborhood by installing bulkheads and by raising streets and sidewalks by three feet.

The Broad Channel project offers a preview of the infrastructure outlays that Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg is envisioning as part of a new $20 billion plan to protect the city’s 520 miles of coast over the next decade from rising sea levels.

But the project also raises fundamental questions about whether, in an era of extreme weather, the government should come to the aid of neighborhoods that are trying to fend off inevitably rising waters.

Broad Channel’s vulnerability was exposed in October during Hurricane Sandy, which toppled homes into the bay, some of which still lie in ruins along the beach. Yet the situation here is far worse than in some other neighborhoods damaged in the hurricane because Broad Channel suffers flooding from the tides and heavy rain, not just from storm surges.

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Everything you wanted to know about illegal front-yard driveways

Photo from Daily News

From the Times Newsweekly:

Is it really too much to expect fellow Woodhaven residents to follow the law, and for New York City agencies to enforce the law?

When it comes to illegal front-yard parking, it seems so.

Across the neighborhood, some residents and homeowners have paved over their front yards and started to park cars there, although it’s against the law.

The result is that concrete has often replaced grass, drivers have been steering their cars over sidewalks even when there are no curb cuts (or, worse still, have been illegally cutting the curbs themselves), and some of these law-breaking drivers have even tried to prevent others from parking in legal street spots that block their illegal parking pads.

Turning a front-yard lawn or garden into a concrete patch is unsightly and might lead to street flooding when rainwater can’t escape into soil. Driving a car up and over a curb where there’s no driveway is dangerous and contributes to a sense of disorder in the neighborhood. Disallowing others to park in legal spots is selfish and reduces the amount of legitimate parking in the neighborhood. Most importantly, all these actions violate the law.

I’m familiar with the objections from those who believe they should be able to do whatever they want with their homes. That, however, is not the way it works in New York City. With so many people living in proximity to each other, what one person does can have a big impact on neighbors or even the community as a whole.

When you pave over your yard, you contribute to the destruction of the character of your block. You hurt the values of nearby properties. And you worsen the problems I mentioned above. The United States might be the land of the free, but that doesn’t mean you’re free to do whatever you want without regard for your community or the law.

Unfortunately, the New York City Buildings Department—the agency with authority on this matter—has been slow to enforce the law and to take action against those who create illegal driveways, carports, or curb cuts in Woodhaven. For instance, I called in one violation and even provided photographic proof. Three months later, the Buildings Department hasn’t even gotten around to taking a look.

I know that these complaints aren’t their top priority. They should, rightly, be giving precedence to imminent public safety hazards, like the building collapse on 79th Street near Jamaica Avenue last month. That building had more than 30 outstanding construction violations.

But the fact remains that three months is an excessive wait for an initial investigation into an illegal driveway. It diminishes residents’ confidence in the authorities, it sends the message that those who violate the law will get away with it indefinitely, and it's unfair to the many residents who follow the law and take pride in maintaining their properties.

Moreover, these front-yard parking pads are often related to other, deeper problems requiring attention. For example, many homeowners create them because of a parking shortage stemming from another illicit behavior: illegal conversions that pack too many people into houses, thus straining city services as well as the stock of available parking spots. And some residents chop down street trees in front of their homes in order to make it easier to pull their cars into and out of illegal driveways, further adding to a less green, more concrete Woodhaven.

The streets of Woodhaven shouldn’t look like one big used car lot. Woodhaven residents should do the right thing, and if they don’t, the Buildings Department should step in and enforce the law.

Editor’s note: Blenkinsopp is member of Community Board 9 and director of communications for the Woodhaven Residents’ Block Association. For additional information on the WRBA, visit www.woodhavennyc.org.

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Consequence of irresponsible zoning and development

I'm sure some of you are going to blame the owners of the house, and they do share responsibility for this, as "buyer beware" probably applies to real estate more than any other thing one can possibly purchase. BUT this type of thing is happening now in neighborhoods that never experienced flooding before. Bottom line: You can't pave everything over, shoehorn in thousands more people and not improve infrastructure first.

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New Bloomberg strategy: propose things that will never happen

From the Politicker:

Mayor Michael Bloomberg outlined a nearly $20 billion master plan Tuesday to shield the city from future Hurricane Sandys, complete with levees, sand dunes, bulkheads, flood walls and a proposed “Seaport City.”

The plan calls for the installation of removable “adaptable floodwalls” in riverfront locations across the city, including Hunts Point in the Bronx, along the East Harlem waterfront, the Lower East Side and the Financial District, as well as a new levee and floodwall system along the East Shore of Staten Island, with barriers that could rise as high as 15 to 20 feet.

The proposal, which the mayor is set to outline in a major speech at Brooklyn Navy’s Yard’s Sandy-damaged Duggal Greenhouse, also calls for the construction of a new dune systems in Staten Island and the Rockaway Peninsula, with a “double dune” planned for Breezy Point.

While the mayor has less than seven months left in office, he also proposed building a new “Seaport City” on the east side of Manhattan, similar to the existing Battery Park City near the Financial District. The new development, which could stretch all the way to Brooklyn, would be built on “a multi-purpose levee with raised edge elevations,” designed to protect the East River shoreline south of the Brooklyn Bridge, while creating a new mini-neighborhood.

Mr. Bloomberg, who has previously said that a sea wall plan was “not practical,” also wants to build a storm surge barrier at Newtown Creek and along Coney Island Creek, and announced plans to work with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to study the feasibility adding “surge barriers” across the mouth of Jamaica Bay to protect communities in Queens.

Meanwhile, people are getting creamed with insurance premiums and building costs.

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If there's another hurricane, we're screwed

From NY Magazine:

There was a time, not so long ago, when hurricane season had little to do with New York City. Then Hurricane Irene hit in 2011, as did Hurricane Sandy in 2012, with devastating consequences. It's impossible to know if New York will find itself staring down another major storm this summer, but NOAA has already predicted that hurricane season — which officiallly began Saturday — will be unusually strong this year. "The outlook calls for a 70% chance of an above-normal season, a 25% chance of a near-normal season, and only a 5% chance of a below-normal season," a recent NOAA report warned.

So here's the $19 billion question: Are we ready for the next Sandy?

And here's the answer: It depends, obviously, on what aspect of storm preparedness you focus on. But in general? No. Not really.

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