Unified Response Is Sought For Flood Plan for the City

City officials are trying to cement a unified response plan to confront what some climate scientists say is an increased risk of flooding in parts of Manhattan.

Floods this week in Missouri, Arkansas, Indiana, Ohio, and Kentucky have resulted in at least 11 deaths. A number of local climatologists are predicting that New York City — with its nearly 600 miles of waterfront — faces similar risks, or worse.

A research scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, Klaus Jacob, predicts that increasing sea levels and unpredictable weather patterns tied to global warming mean that hurricane-type storms in New York could increase to a frequency of one every decade.

"Precipitation and heat events will be felt more by the general population, but in the background is the giant elephant heading for the porcelain jar, and that is sea level rising," he said.

Over the next 80 years, sea levels around New York City could rise anywhere from 11.8 to 37.5 inches, according to calculations issued by the U.S. Global Change Research Program, a federal agency. The result could be flooding in low-lying neighborhoods and the repeated shutdowns of the metropolitan transportation system.

"There are huge, huge infrastructure costs, and we only have a little bit of time to think about it if we are lucky," Mr. Jacob said.

The Bloomberg administration has tasked a number of its agencies, including the Department of Environmental Protection, the Department of Transportation, the Department of Buildings, the Department of Sanitation, the Department of Parks and Recreation, and the city's Office of Emergency Management, to work in concert with the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Red Cross to improve the city's response to flooding.

"What we are trying to ensure is that there is a comprehensive public outreach campaign. We can't stop the rain or control the weather, but we can make sure residents are better-informed and better-prepared before and after these events," the director of agency services in the mayor's office of operations, Carole Post, said.

Ms. Post said that the multiagency team is identifying the most high-risk areas, determining how better clearing of the streets could aid in storm drainage.

"There was a real sense of urgency post-Katrina. We looked very hard at what would have happened if that storm would have hit New York City, and that created some urgency," the deputy commissioner for planning in the office of emergency management, Kelly McKinney, said.

The Office of Emergency Management is the coordinating agency for the city's coastal storm plan and the natural hazard mitigation plan.

Mr. McKinney said the city relies heavily on technology and mapping models to determine the size, trajectory, and possible impact of developing storms.

"The front end is the decision-making piece: whether we evacuate and who we need to evacuate, choosing the areas that will be flooded, and how to evacuate hospitals and nursing homes," he said.

Areas at risk are many and include parts of Lower Manhattan, the Lower East Side, Harlem, southern Brooklyn, Coney Island, Queens, and portions of Long Island City, among others, according to a report from Columbia University's Center for Climate Systems.

But some see any response by the city as an exercise in futility. A scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and author of "Climate Confusion," Roy Spencer, says that dire predictions of global warming and a substantial rise in the sea level have been exaggerated.

"It's a cost versus benefit thing. If it was easy to fix the problem, easy to prepare ourselves for a 4-foot rise in the sea level, it would be stupid not to do it," he said. "But I don't know whether there is anything in the way of public policy that is going to be cheap that is going to prepare for the things that people are predicting."

The director of the CUNY Institute for Sustainable Cities, William Solecki, said engineers who are working on major capital development projects should account for this possible flooding.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority would likely be the agency most affected by increased flooding.

An MTA official, Ernest Tollerson, said the MTA's Sustainability Commission has been analyzing the amount of impervious surface in projects, hoping to take pressure off of the sewer system, and looking to incorporate the use of surge barriers when necessary.

"In other parts of the world it has been clearly an issue," he said. "It's been an issue here for the academic community and researchers, but getting it elevated to the policy agenda has been a challenge."

The MTA commission will be issuing a set of recommendations on Earth Day and a final report at the end of the year.