Living in a neighborhood that floods, rain or shine
On a cloudless morning two years ago, shortly after Danielle Smith moved into a new apartment in Far Rockaway, Queens, she looked out her window and saw a swan gliding by.
Overnight, the street in front of her house had become a creek.
That morning, Ms. Smith, a 36-year-old mother of five, learned she lived in one of the city’s most vulnerable areas to flooding during high tides.
One hundred thousand New Yorkers currently live in low-lying coastal neighborhoods affected by chronic flooding. About half of them, like Ms. Smith briefly, live in the working- and middle-class enclaves around Jamaica Bay.
In the Rockaways, a low-lying peninsula in Queens that separates the Atlantic Ocean from Jamaica Bay, life has long been determined by the tides. High tide flooding is not caused by the weather, but by the bimonthly alignment of the Earth, Sun and Moon. When there is a full or new moon, the sun and moon exert a gravitational pull that causes the tides to swell.
But as climate change causes sea levels to rise, high tide flooding – also called nuisance flooding or sunny day flooding because it can occur on clear days – is likely to inundate more coastal neighborhoods across the five boroughs.
By 2050, Lower Manhattan could experience 85 days of high tide flooding annually, a fivefold increase. According to the New York City Comptroller’s office, 600,000 city residents could be affected by regular tidal flooding by the end of this century.
“Tidal flooding is a pretty big existential threat to the climate,” said Louise Yeung, chief climate officer at the comptroller’s office. “So how do we as a city deal with these types of threats where some neighborhoods will be permanently or semi-regularly flooded?” she added.
The effects of tidal flooding were clearly visible during the heavy rainstorm in September, which flooded much of the city and brought the transport system to a virtual standstill. During the height of the morning traffic, a heavy rainstorm stopped over New York at the same time as the flood.
As the rain poured down, the floodwaters caused the drain pipes to rise. In the low-lying neighborhoods the water had nowhere to go. In the Gowanus neighborhood of Brooklyn, city sensors measured more than a meter of high water.
“Timing is everything,” says Brett Branco, executive director of the Science and Resilience Institute at Jamaica Bay, a research center based at Brooklyn College. “These kinds of compound events, where you have flooding on sunny days coinciding with extreme rainfall, are becoming more likely due to climate change, and they can reinforce each other.”
Both heavy rainfall and tidal flooding are increasing as the climate changes. As the atmosphere warms, it holds more moisture and water vapor, causing rain showers.
Although tidal rhythms are determined by the position of the Earth, sun and moon, flooding on sunny days is still an increasingly common problem due to sea level rise, which makes the tides even higher.
When Jamaica Bay was first developed, the land – which consists of filled-in wetland – was several inches above the water. As sea levels rose, that protective buffer has eroded over time.
“The old-timers here, myself included, can remember when the coastline was further away than it is today,” said James Sanders Jr., state senator and longtime resident of the Rockaways. “We will be washed away.”
Since 2000 the east coast of the United States has seen an increase of 150 percent in annual high tide flood days, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Sea levels are rising almost twice as fast as the global rate in New York City, which is falling in part due to natural geological processes. The coastline is especially vulnerable. Centuries of development have cleared vegetation while at the same time building more housing and infrastructure on low-lying land.
Tidal flooding is a more prominent problem in cities like Miami, where the public in densely populated areas is warned in advance about tidal flooding, said Nadia Seeteram, a research scientist at Columbia Climate School who has studied the effects of tidal flooding in Miami.
In Miami, flooding on sunny days occurs in central, high-traffic areas such as the city center. In New York, by contrast, tidal flooding is most common in areas far from the city center, in neighborhoods around Jamaica Bay and on Staten Island.
New York is also struggling with other climate extremes that cause much more damage: heat kills many more New Yorkers than floods. Hurricanes and rain storms cause the most financial losses. But sea level rise and tidal flooding are longer-term threats.
“It’s never been the biggest story in New York City, but I thought about it every day,” said Daniel Zarrilli, the special advisor for climate and sustainability at Columbia University and previously the former mayor’s top climate policy adviser. Bill de Blasio. “It’s not getting the attention it deserves.”
In New York City, one of the main plans to address flooding and storm surge is to raise elevation: On Broad Channel, an island in Jamaica Bay, the city is building roads and needing homeowners in many of the neighborhoods that were destroyed by Hurricane Sandy. to demolish their houses.
In some new developments, city planners are beginning to design areas that anticipate flooding during high tides. For example, the shoreline park at Hunters Point South, in Queens, is being renovated with native grasses and trees that absorb water. Ecologists are fortifying areas in Jamaica Bay with berms and rebuilding “living shorelines” with native plants, which they hope will act as a buffer against high tides.
The second strategy is called managed withdrawal, which means removing people from the coastline. The city has rezoned some of its most at-risk neighborhoods, limiting future development there. The possibility of purchasing the houses with the highest risk is also being considered.
“I think we’re doing the right things, but I think the challenge we face is whether we can do them fast enough,” said Rohit Aggarwala, commissioner of the city’s Department of Environmental Protection. “Part of it is about how many resources the city can dedicate to these things in an environment of limited budgets.”
Mr. Zarrilli said he believed the city had the right policies, but ultimately the city would have to evolve. “I wonder how sustainable the buyouts are as they are currently conceived,” he said. “At some point the land simply won’t be valuable anymore.”
For decades, residents of Jamaica Bay have adapted to living with nuisance flooding. Residents in vulnerable areas know to consult tide chart apps, move their cars to higher ground and take off their waders for a wet commute.
However, for many, tidal flooding is more than just an inconvenience. It means days off, kids not going to school and skipping doctor’s appointments.
These floods can be unpredictable depending on wind or rain. Some weeks the tide brings only six inches at night, leaving only a small puddle by morning. At other times, water may splash at the front door.
Ms. Smith worked as a cleaner at Barclays Center while living in Far Rockaway, but she said it was difficult to keep her job because of the flooding. A few times she had to call the police to help her take her children to school.
“It was scary,” she remembers. She said she often worried about her toddlers being hit by a flood. “The water was unpredictable.”
Shortly after moving to the neighborhood in 2021 after living in a shelter, a social worker visited the home to assess its suitability for one of her daughters who has cerebral palsy and had been in a children’s hospital. She was told the flooding made it unsafe for her daughter and the medical facility’s social worker refused to discharge her to Mrs. Smith.
“When we think of climate change and flooding, we think of catastrophic storms,” said Katie Graziano, a climate resilience specialist at ERG, an environmental consulting group, who has studied the impacts of tidal flooding on residents of Jamaica Bay. “But when you talk about weekly flooding, you wonder, ‘When does a place become unlivable?'”
The flooding in Far Rockaway proved unliveable for Mrs. Smith. Earlier this year, she moved with her family to an apartment in St. Albans, Queens. Her new home was spacious and, most importantly for her, far inland.
“I’m just grateful that we got out of that situation,” she recently recalled. “We don’t want to experience such a situation again.”
Audio produced by Jack D’Isidoro.