NYC sinking can’t be stopped, so turn it into a ‘modern Venice’: scientist
Lower Manhattan will be underwater in less than 80 years, climate experts fear.
A new report from a US Geological Survey member warns that New York City is sinking under the massive weight of its own buildings.
Manhattan, in particular, will be more prone to natural disasters because of it.
Those two factors — combined with rising sea levels — could leave the Big Apple’s coastal areas unrecognizable by the turn of the century, according to geophysicist Klaus Jacob, a professor emeritus at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.
“There could be as much as 6 feet of sea level rise [give or take] by the end of the century … then we will have a real problem on our hands in the city,” he told The Post.
“The best way to deal with rising sea levels combined with storm surge would be, of course, retreating to higher ground,” Jacob said. “But tell that to the property owners in lower Manhattan and other places that they have to move skyscrapers to a higher ground. That’s not going to happen.”
So, Jacob has an unorthodox proposal to manage what might come around at the turn of the century.
He wants to convert lower Manhattan into a modern Venice and accept that its thoroughfares will become canals that people can live and work on.
“If we want to keep skyscrapers and other buildings functioning, they will need to become mini islands that are standing in the water,” Jacob said.
“They will have to be serviced not by taxis on wheels, but instead amphibian boats. Barges will have to come to pick up the garbage. And we need more highlines that connect the various buildings with each other.”
While the days of doomsday flooding may seem to be a lifetime away, Jacob insists that the threat needs to be taken more seriously and accommodations need to start being made now.
“All the infrastructure, electric, gas, communication, it needs to be waterproofed,” he said.
Lower Manhattan isn’t the only area at risk area in the tristate, though.
“Long Island, Staten Island, Brooklyn, Queens, The Bronx, you name it,” he said. “The Hudson Valley all the way up to Troy … I would say anything at elevation 20 [feet above sea level] and below is an extreme risk. There’s a marginal risk for elevations between 20 and 30 feet.”
Just over the past decade, there have already been telltale signs that the worst is yet to come.
The devastation of Hurricane Sandy was mentioned as cause for further concern in the recent report — as was the devastating, fatal flooding in NYC from Hurricane Ida in 2021.
“All climate change models show that in the future, the storms, the hurricanes will get more intense,” Jacob said.
“So that probably means stronger storm surges, higher storm surges, and that’s more risk and lost protection for the city.”
The Army Corps of Engineers is proposing a $52B construction of coastal seawalls to mitigate the looming circumstances.
But Jacob fears that the “piecemeal” approach doesn’t address the bigger picture concerns.
“That is a finite duration … sooner or later, we will run out of our means and ways to deal with those issues,” he said. “Now that’s not happening tomorrow, but a few decades after tomorrow and from [year] 2,100 on, it will get serious.”
