Sunrise over newly planted water-resilient seagrasses. In addition to absorbing floodwaters, these plants provide protection from beach erosion, which has historically been a major problem in the Rockaways.
I took a run on the boardwalk this morning at sunrise, and this is one of the photos I snapped of the newly planted salt-resistant shrubs and seagrasses on the beach.
This photo doesn’t show the boardwalk, which was also recently rebuilt from the bottom up after Hurricane Sandy. What you can’t see either is the 1.5 million cubic yards of sand that Sandy took from the beach, or efforts to restore and replenish the beach with 3.6 million cubic yards.
Fortunately, the Rockaways got together as a community to help the area become more sustainable in light of more extreme weather events. Droves of schoolchildren helped plant more than “400 trees (and) 10,000 sprigs of beach grass,” all of which will aid the stop beach erosion and assist in soaking up floodwaters in the case of a storm.
One thing I would like you to consider is how NYC will recover in the eventuality of the next storm. With the climate changing, the world warming, and sea levels rising, how will we deal with the next so-called ‘100-year-storm?’ Chances are likely that we won’t have 100 years to think about it, so the best time to act in defense of Planet Earth is now.
