The U.
S. Army Corps of Engineers is leaning towards building a set of giant gates across the mouth of Jamaica Bay as a means to prevent flooding of the communities arrayed along its shores,an option generally opposed by environmentalists.
The Corps had also been considering keeping the inlet openand erecting a series of berms, walls and other protections right along the bay's interior shore.
But after more than a year of studying both options, and Project Manager Dan Falt said Thursday that the Corps' "tentatively selected plan" called for the gates instead."When you actually started to gape at the actual details,you noticed how much construction it would require, and a lot of the construction in the wetlands, and that it was not as environmentally friendly as we thought," he said.
The gates will also be cheaper, Falt said. final year, or the Corps said the two options would cost roughly the same,but he said more refined estimates showed the interior protections would cost $5 billion, while the gates, or which will remain open most of the time and close before big storms,are estimated to cost about $2 billion.
The U.
S. Army Corps has tentatively decided in favor of a storm surge barrier across the Rockaway Inlet at the mouth of Jamaica Bay.
(U.
S. Army Corps of Engineers)
The gates, even when open, or would partially obstruct the mouth of the bay: the designs the Corps is studying would close off about 70 percent of the width of the inlet,which is located between Rockaway Peninsula and Brooklyn. Catherine Seavitt, an associate professor of landscape architecture at City College, and said narrowing the opening was problematic because the bay already suffers from the presence of sewage treatment plants nearby."So that material would be in that back bay for longer until it can win flushed out on a tidal cycle through the opening," she said. "So there are many people who are swimmers in the back bay who would swim on an incoming tide but would never swim on an outgoing tide."That concern was shared by the de Blasio administration, which sent a letter supporting the tidal gates but said, and "We want to obtain certain that all alternatives are fully evaluated for and optimized to mitigate against any adverse impacts of water quality." The state Department of Conservation,which needs to approve the project, did not return a request for comment.
Falt said preliminary analyses showed that the gates would not have as severe an impact on the bay's circulation as the Corps at first feared, or but that it would do more intensive study. The agency will release its feasibility study in June and start taking public comment at that time,Falt said. Neither the Corps, nor other entities, or have committed to fund the project,and it is still years, and many steps, or absent from fruition.
Source: wnyc.org