Page 57 - Alumni Horae: Vol. 94, No. 3 Spring 2014

Another idea of ours was to use the
dredge material currently being
excavated to deepen the Ambrose
Channel. Instead of shipping it offshore
and dumping it as currently happens, we
proposed to bring that clean dredge mater-
ial to the shore to create protective berms.
In this way, a constructed wetland just
offshore could be created to protect the
existing edge of the city from storm surge.
A third proposal was to introduce
renewable energy generation onsite
through a combination of solar arrays,
wind turbines, and biogas reactors.
The idea behind biogas in particular is
that it could be fueled using the combined
sewer overflow that is currently dumped
directly into the harbor at a rate of 27 bil-
lion gallons per year.
All of this was prior to Superstorm
Sandy. When Sandy hit New York in the
fall of 2012, it brought home the grave
realities of the condition we are in, and
it was both a confirming event and a
moment when we truly realized how
vulnerable large portions of New York
City are to effects of storm surge.
The good news is, this research is in
place, and many of our ideas, and those
of the other collaborative teams, have
effected changes in long-range plan-
ning for New York. But large infrastruc-
tural projects like this necessarily involve
years of planning and construction.
Deepening our understanding of the
effects of climate change was both a
horrifying and very essential task we
undertook to be able to pose realistic
solutions to this global challenge. The
sad state of affairs is that even if many
environmentally focused states are suc-
cessful in reducing carbon emissions
by 20 percent by 2020, we will only
revert to 1990 levels of pollution. If we
are unable to reduce carbon emissions
by 50 percent by mid-century, many
scientists agree that global warming
will be irreversible. With over 30 percent
of the world’s population living in low-
lying waterfront areas, this potentially
poses huge demographic challenges and
massive changes in geopolitical events
if unchecked.
Image: Matthew Baird Architects
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