Great (Flood) Wall Of Hoboken: 5 Things You Need To Know

Hoboken, NJ – Do you remember the damage that Superstorm Sandy did to Hoboken?

It’s time to do something to prevent it from happening again.

That’s the rallying cry behind the city’s $230 million “Rebuild By Design” project, which among other initiatives, includes a plan to build flood prevention barriers – some that may reportedly reach 12 feet or more – in low-lying areas of Hoboken’s waterfront.

But the flood wall proposal is stirring up controversy among some residents and environmental advocates, some of whom charge that the barriers will assassinate the character of the Mile Square City and its New York City views.

Here are five things that you need to know about the plan to build flood prevention walls in Hoboken.

WHAT’S THE PLAN?

The city’s overall flood prevention plan – known as “Resist, Delay, Store, Discharge: a Comprehensive Urban Water Strategy” - was developed by Dutch firm Office For Metropolitan Architecture (OMA).

See OMA’s final proposal here.

The overall plan has four major components such as “delaying” stormwater runoff, “storing” water using green infrastructure and upgrading Hoboken’s stormwater management system to help “discharge” floodwaters.

But it is the fourth aspect of the plan – “resisting” – which is causing some of the loudest uproar among Hoboken residents.

According to the DEP, the “resist” aspect of the plan includes a “combination of hard infrastructure (such as bulkheads, floodwalls and seawalls) and soft landscaping features (such as berms and/or levees which could be used as parks) that act as barriers along the coast during exceptionally high tide and/or storm surge events.”

WHERE WILL THE BARRIERS BE PLACED?

Exactly where the barriers might be placed – and how high they may be – is still under consideration.

According to the New Jersey DEP, the overall plan will take place throughout the City of Hoboken and extend into Weehawken and Jersey City with the following boundaries: the Hudson River to the east; Baldwin Avenue (in Weehawken) to the north, the Palisades to the west, and 18th Street, Washington Boulevard and 14th Street (in Jersey City) to the south.

“State engineers have drawn up five configurations, including some that would place a wall on the waterfront and one that would have it wind along city streets and end on a block lined with brownstones,” The New York Times reported.

Proposed configurations include:

• A wall or gated jetty at Weehawken Cove
• A wall that stretches south down the middle of Garden Street
• A wall alongside the Observer Highway
• A gated dam in the water outside the Hoboken ferry terminal

Preliminary renderings of the five concepts and their proposed locations can be seen online here.

Areas around Hoboken Cove and a local NJ Transit rail yard may also be potential locations for stormwater barriers, according to a 2014 city memo.

“It was reported by emergency personnel and eye witnesses that Hurricane Sandy’s storm surge from the Hudson River breached Hoboken’s shoreline at two locations: the Hoboken Cove to the north and the Long Slip Canal in NJ Transit’s rail yard to the south,” the memo stated.

“The City of Hoboken has collaborated with NJ Transit on an application for federal FTA funding to floodproof the Hoboken terminal and rail yard to prevent future flooding. To the north, the city owns the upland property immediately along Hoboken Cove and had prepared concept plans for a future park, having been awarded $1 million by the New Jersey Green Acres program. However, after Hurricane Sandy, the city is re-thinking its approach and will be redesigning the park area to consider incorporating armored levees, bulkhead, riprap revetment or seawalls to prevent future storm surges from entering the city.”

The question of how tall the barriers might be is also a question for debate.

“Defense against storm surge is primarily a question of elevation,” OMA states in its final project proposal. “The height of flood defense measures is determined by an extreme water level analysis, which is based on storm surge water levels to defend against—in this case, a one-in-500-year storm surge water level—and expected sea-level rise.”

THE OPPOSITION

Some of the staunchest opposition has come from a group of residents near Garden Street, who say that one version of the plan would include erecting a four-foot high wall that would stretch from Weehawken Cove as far as 12th Street.

That version of the project would “destroy a historic residential neighborhood and expose taxpaying homeowners who are not in a flood zone to new flood risks by trapping them on the ‘wet side’ of the new wall,” opponents allege in an online petition titled “Say No To Option A.”

See the petition here.

The New Jersey Sierra Club has also criticized a proposal to build flood walls on the north and south side of Hoboken, charging that the move will solely benefit developers and not residents.

“The wall would raise the water level with the water going around the walls or being pushed into neighboring communities like Jersey City and Weehawken,” Sierra Club Director Jeff Tittel stated. “In order for this to have a chance of working you would have to put a wall around the entire city with gates at every street in and out of the city. This will cost hundreds of millions of dollars and most likely not work anyway.”

Tittel also said at the time that walls would impact public access and views and take up open space that could be used for flood storage.

Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer later called the Sierra Club’s position “inaccurate.”

“Our proposal bears little resemblance to the plans described in the release,” Zimmer said.

• See related article: NJ Sierra Club Says Hoboken Flood Wall Proposal ‘Won’t Work’

WHERE IS THE MONEY COMING FROM?

In 2014, the city announced that it won $230 million of federal funding as part of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Rebuild by Design resiliency competition.

The HUD funding competition launched in the summer of 2013 in an effort to “develop ideas to improve physical, ecological, economic, and social resilience in regions affected by Superstorm Sandy,” according to the NJDEP.

“This unprecedented level of funding will enable Hoboken and its neighbors to finally solve the flooding problem that has plagued the region for so long,” city administrators stated in a news release.

Watch a HUD video about the Rebuild By Design competition below.

THE FUTURE

Whatever shape the final design of the plan takes, there is a virtual certainty that it will affect large swaths of the Hudson County community.

OMA reports that the project’s stakeholders include Bike Hoboken, Community Emergency Response Team, County of Hudson Division of Planning, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Hoboken Boys and Girls Club, Hoboken Catholic Academy, Hoboken Chamber of Commerce, Hoboken Chamber of Commerce, Hoboken City Council, Hoboken Commuter Community, Hoboken Cove Community Boathouse, Hoboken Day Care, Hoboken Developers, Hoboken Dual Language Charter School (HOLA), Hoboken Green Infrastructure Strategic Plan, Louis Berger (Together North Jersey), Hoboken Housing Authority, Hoboken Jubilee Center, Hoboken Resident Community Hopes, Jersey City Division of City Planning, Mile Mesh, Mayor of Hoboken Dawn Zimmer, Mayor of Jersey City Steven Fulop, Mayor of Weehawken Richard Turner, New Jersey Department Environmental Protection, New Jersey Economic Development Administration, New Jersey Governor’s Office of Recovery and Rebuilding, New Jersey Transit, North Hudson Sewerage Authority, Port Authority of New York & New Jersey and PATH, Public Service Electric and Gas Company (PSEG), Re.Invest Initiative (Rockefeller Foundation), New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez, New Jersey Senator Cory Booker, Stevens Institute of Technology, US Army Corps of Engineers, U.S. Department of the Interior and the Weehawken City Council.

What do you think about possible flood barriers in Hoboken? Share your opinion in the comments section and we’ll share the best replies in an upcoming article.

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Photo via the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection