Mayor Eric Adams of New York announced on Tuesday a $146 million plan that would add sorely needed drainage infrastructure and other improvements to a low-lying area of the city so notorious for flooding that it is known as the Hole.
The plan also incorporates neighborhoods just outside the Hole — a poor, sunken area about four miles from Kennedy International Airport — including East New York in Brooklyn and Lindenwood in Queens.
The Hole, also known as the Jewel Streets area, sits just a few feet above sea level, among the lowest elevations in the city. The neighborhood can flood after even a modest rainfall, and septic tanks have been known to overflow. The proposal unveiled on Tuesday, known as the Jewel Streets Neighborhood Plan, would provide the community with a new sewer system, elevate some streets in the area and seek to construct affordable housing.
“For too long, the Jewel Streets neighborhood has suffered from chronic flooding, dangerous streets and a dire housing shortage,” Mayor Adams said in a statement issued on Tuesday.
The plan would upgrade four different areas: the Jewel Streets, where drainage issues would be addressed; East New York, where a large city-owned lot would be converted into a mixed-used complex with affordable housing; and along Conduit Avenue and Linden Boulevard, two major thoroughfares that would receive new traffic safety measures, some public transit improvements and some development, including housing.
The plan — the result of two years of workshops and meetings among community groups, residents and city leaders — is far from a done deal and must go through land-use and environmental reviews that could take years before it can move forward. The proposal will also need to be embraced by the incoming mayor, as Mr. Adams is not seeking re-election.
With just a few hundred residents amid its swampy surroundings, the Hole would seem a prime candidate for managed retreat, the practice in which the government buys out homes and returns a developed area to nature.
Instead, the city hopes to preserve the neighborhood by offering a combination of buyouts and home upgrades.
City officials would offer a voluntary buyout program as part of the proposal unveiled on Tuesday, which would be the first of its kind in New York City by giving residents the option to sell their homes to the government before, not after, a natural disaster.
Julisa Rodriguez, a longtime resident of the Hole who has endured many floods and mold concerns in her home, is ready to sell, she said. “I’m hopeful, but not excited yet, until everything is finalized,” Ms. Rodriguez said of the plan.
The proposal would also allow residents of the Hole who chose to stay to receive financial assistance to retrofit their homes, city officials said.
The city intends to develop housing along Linden Boulevard, which sits close to the low-lying Jewel Streets, as well as on a 17-acre, city-owned vacant lot. The property, which sits above the 100-year floodplain in East New York, Brooklyn, would include 1,400 affordable and mixed-income homes.
The construction of the new sewer system, which would include nature-based storm-water drainage in the Jewel Streets area and new connections to sanitary sewers, could take as much as a decade to complete, said a spokesman for the city’s Department of Environmental Protection.
With its intentions to build housing on nearby higher ground while improving drainage in low-lying areas, the plan would tackle the twin crises of housing and climate change, said Moses Gates, the vice president for housing and neighborhood planning at the Regional Plan Association, a nonprofit civic organization.
“We are big proponents of coupling infrastructure projects with building more housing,” said Mr. Moses, who was an author of a report, published this summer, that projected that the New York area could lose up to 80,000 homes to flooding over the next 15 years.
“Providing appropriate sewer and storm-water infrastructure for development is very basic city management,” he said. “It’s difficult to see any future administration backing off of this plan, especially if the local community is vocal in their advocacy for it.”
Hilary Howard is a Times reporter covering how the New York City region is adapting to climate change and other environmental challenges.
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