But after the drought, a deluge occurred. Heavy rains soaked the
city in late August that year, once again flooding the FDR Drive and the
West Side Highway, and drowning some subway tracks in 5 feet of
water. The big rainstorm was followed in September by Hurricane
Floyd. The worst of the hurricane just bypassed the city, but total
regional property damage was estimated at $1 billion. Since global
warming brings with it the certainty of rising sea level and stormier
weather, the city’s aging infrastructure and delicate natural balance
face unheard-of challenges.
Vivien Gornitz, associate research scientist at NASA’s Goddard
Institute for Space Studies, points toward a rectangular box jutting out
of the Hudson in lower Manhattan, near a guarded U.S. Coast Guard
booth. “That tide gauge uses an acoustic device to record the level of
the sea’s surface,” she explains. “It takes a reading every six minutes.”
Gornitz and other researchers from Columbia University, New York
University, and Montclair State University in New Jersey conducted an
exhaustive study of the Metro East Coast (MEC) Region, which
includes greater New York, Northern New Jersey, and Southern
Connecticut, for the “U.S. National Assessment of the Potential
Consequences of Climate Variability and Change for the Nation.” The
MEC findings were published by the Columbia Earth Institute in 2001.
One of the things that troubles Gornitz is all the recent con-
struction at the water’s edge. “Look, you can see it’s on both sides of
the river,” she gestures, her arm taking in both sides of the Hudson
just north of the former World Trade Center site. Gornitz fears that
all the luxurious waterfront condominiums and commercial busi-
nesses are taking a risk that will increase dramatically as the new
century progresses.
The most conservative climate change model used for the MEC
study does not allow for rising greenhouse gas emissions; it merely
projects the effects of the current rate of sea-level rise. By the end of the
century, it says, we will be seeing 100-year floods every 50 years. “In
the worst-case scenario, it could be as often as every four to five years,”
Gornitz adds. “It wouldn’t mean the whole city under water, just the
low-lying areas, including beach communities, coastal wetlands and
some of the airports.” And to further exacerbate the problem, the
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