SHEEPSHEAD BAY'S ONLY INDEPENDENT NEWS BLOG

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With the threat of climate change and redrawn flood zone lines leading to skyrocketing insurance rates, you’d think the only thing that is certain to rise along the Southern Brooklyn waterfront would be encroaching flood waters and not property taxes. Well, property taxes have been hiked for Manhattan Beach, Sheepshead Bay and other coastal areas like Coney Island and the Rockaways, according to a report by the New York Post.

The rise in property taxes comes as a cruel blow to homeowners who have already shelled out thousands on home-repair following Sandy. According to the Post, the news of the tax hikes doesn’t sit well with local residents:

“This is totally insensitive and heartless,” said Ira Zalcman, president of the Manhattan Beach Community Group, which has received more than 30 complaints from residents about the hikes.

“We just sustained one of the worst national disasters in our nation’s history, and now the city is delusional, claiming our property values went up.”

Zalcman said that since Sandy, he has spent roughly $100,000 repairing the basement of his Dover Street oceanfront home, for which he pays more than $7,000 a year in property taxes.

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For many of us, Hurricane Sandy was a wake up call. The storm smashed our businesses, flooded our homes and disrupted our lives, showing how fragile we all are so close to the sea. While scientists, engineers and residents all grapple with questions concerning the future of the city and how to best protect it, politicians and real estate developers are going full speed ahead in developing expensive real estate projects in vulnerable flood zones.

A story in the IBO web blog details the plans, the costs and the risks facing these projects in the face of a changing environment brought on by the reality of climate change.

While acknowledging that City Hall, led by Mayor Bloomberg, have put the science of climate change and its impact on the city front and center, in the form of the 2011 report Vision 2020: New York City Comprehensive Waterfront Plan, the city has given the go ahead to multi-million dollar projects right in the middle of Zone A evacuation areas.

Such projects include a $500 million dollar complex on the North Shore of Staten Island, which will feature the world’s largest Ferris wheel. Locally, the city approved an even bigger investment for Coney Island. City Hall rezoned the area to allow for more housing, hotels and a brand new amusement park. The city also wants to pump $400 million into the area to upgrade the sewers, acquire new land and improve the lighting and boardwalk.

While IBO notes that the city is making an effort to meet the guidelines and codes laid out by the Federal Emergency Agency, they might not be be enough in the face mega-storms that may become the norm in the coming future. Citing Yale University’s Environment 360 website:

“The storm easily overwhelmed many of the relatively minor adaptations that New York had already put in place.”

For example, Brooklyn Bridge Park, where another large development project is planned, was created with what are called “soft edges.” These are supposed to help reduce the force of waves and accommodate rising tidal levels. While these edges may work in many instances, they were no match for Sandy, which swamped the park and sent water lapping at the structure housing the newly installed carousel.

America is known for racing as fast as the forces of commerce will take her, especially in the world of real estate, but such speed may need to be tempered in this new world where Mother Nature’s power trumps progress. The question remains as to how many lessons we will have to learn before we fully heed the limits the natural world lays before us.

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In a frightening, yet somehow fun, new interactive map, the New York Times presents a grim portrait of the city’s future in the coming centuries, a future that wipes Sheepshead Bay off the map in a few hundred years.

The map’s data, based on a 2012 study from the journal Science, predicts that in 100 to 300 years, assuming the world’s nations continue on their course of making only moderate cuts to pollution, the oceans will rise five feet, swallow LaGuardia Airport and flood all ports. This level of flooding will contribute to the disappearance of seven percent of the total city.

Things get much worse after 2300. By then, the oceans will have risen 12 feet, sinking JFK airport, Coney Island, the Rockaways and all neighborhoods along Jamaica Bay. Obviously this includes our beloved Sheepshead Bay. Who knows, perhaps our descendants will all be living in the sky like the Jetsons, or in underwater domes like true Atlantians. Either way, at that point, nearly a quarter of the New York City we know and love will be submerged forever.

For those really looking to imagine a brave new world, or at least one where no effort whatsoever was taken to cut pollution or build massive sea walls, projections into the deep future are also given. For example, 39 percent of New York City will have vanished, with Manhattan only existing north of 34th street. The oceans will have risen a staggering 25 feet, and our only hope for survival will be developing unsightly gills like Kevin Costner did in Waterworld and sailing aimlessly around the globe in a vain effort to find some kind of land-based oasis.

How’s that for a cheery article about our future generations?

Unless radical “hover home” technology gets developed in the latter part of the 21st century, the New York Times has a warning for you: the thousands of coastal communities dotting the edges of New York City are going to be washed away by the expanding catastrophic flood zones brought upon by the predicted continued erosion of the polar ice caps.

While Mayor Bloomberg has commissioned extensive research studies on the effects of climate change, and what it means for the city, critics have pointed to the crippling chaos Hurricane Irene unleashed on the city’s infrastructure last year as a sign that long-term plans to protect the city are moving too slowly.

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New York State’s future will hold hotter summers, snowier winters, severe floods and a range of other symptoms of an environment in flux, according to the latest climate change predictions. That could mean disaster for waterfront communities like Sheepshead Bay.

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