Congressman Dan Goldman and Congresswoman Nydia Velázquez Lead Members of Congress in Demanding Comprehensive Flood Protection for New York and New Jersey

Upcoming U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Flood Protection Plan Only Protects Against Storm Surge, Neglects Tidal and River Flooding, Heavy Rainfall, Erosion, and Sea Level Rise Threats

Members Urging U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to Update Protection Plan, Bring into Compliance with Water Resources Development Act and Justice40 Initiative

Read the Letter Here

Brooklyn, NY – Congressman Dan Goldman (NY-10) and Congresswoman Nydia M. Velázquez (NY-13) today led twelve Members of Congress from New York and New Jersey in sending a bi-partisan letter to the United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) expressing concern that the Corps plan to address flood risk insufficiently protects New York and New Jersey against multiple varieties of flooding. The upcoming plan fails to address tidal and river flooding, heavy rainfall, groundwater emergence, erosion, and sea level rise. Their plan also does not comply with the Water Resources Development Acts (WRDA) of 2020 and 2022 or President Biden’s Justice40 Initiative (J40).

“With the passage of WRDA, Congress directed the Army Corps to formulate a plan that protects the region from tidal and river flooding, heavy rainfall, groundwater emergence, erosion, sea level rise and storm surge,” wrote the Lawmakers. “However, after seven years of planning, the Army Corps is proposing to spend $52.6 billion to protect our constituents from only one kind of flooding - storm surge. Members of Congress worked diligently to pass WRDA on behalf of our constituents in communities that remain vulnerable to multiple flood threats, and we urge HATS to comply. To ignore the more frequent flooding threats that plague our region is an irresponsible use of taxpayer dollars.”

In the letter, the Members list actions that they would like USACE to take to better protect millions of residents in the New York-New Jersey metropolitan area from flooding: 

1. Promptly issue implementation guidance on applicable directives in 2020 and 2022 WRDA legislation;
2. Factor that guidance into the current draft environmental impact study (DEIS) to conduct additional analyses and develop additional alternatives;
3. Ensure that disadvantaged communities are properly protected; and
4. Issue a Supplemental Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) for public review and comment before reaching the Agency Decision Milestone.

The New York-New Jersey Harbor and Tributaries Focus Area Feasibility Study (HATS), and its upcoming Agency Decision Milestone (ADM), tentatively scheduled for release this summer, does not comply with the Water Resources Development Acts (WRDA) of 2020 and 2022 or President Biden’s Justice40 Initiative (J40).

In addition to Velázquez and Goldman, this letter was signed by Representatives Yvette Clarke (NY-09), Adriano Espaillat (NY-13), Hakeem Jefferies (NY-08), Michael Lawler (NY-17), Greogory Meeks (NY-05), Grace Meng (NY-06), Jerrold Nadler (NY-12), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY-14), Donald Payne (NJ-10), Patrick Ryan (NY-18), Paul Tonko (NY-20), and Ritchie Torres (NY-15).

Lauren Cosgrove, Northeast Campaign Director for the National Parks Conservation Association said,“We are so grateful for the leadership of Congresswomen Velazquez and Congressman Goldman and other members of Congress on raising their concerns about this costly and destructive project. This outdated plan is the most expensive project proposed by the Army Corps and yet fails to do what it was intended to, which is to protect communities from more frequent, everyday flooding and sea level rise. It would destroy viewsheds, pave what’s left of the invaluable greenspaces along the cities’ waterfronts and block public access that we fought hard to preserve after Sandy. This one-size-fits all approach would restrict water flow and make our communities and national park lands at Gateway National Recreation Area more vulnerable to flooding and dirtier water, risking public health and safety. The Corps must hit the pause button and design a better plan, as federal law requires, to ensure a better future for the 16 million people that live and work here and the millions more that visit.”

Sarah Charlop-Powers, Executive Director of the Natural Areas Conservancy said, "The Natural Areas Conservancy firmly believes that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers must take a more holistic approach to coastal protection that considers community and social benefits, evaluates economic impacts with equity and environmental justice at the forefront, and carefully evaluates and minimizes impacts to the incredible ecosystems and biodiversity that New York City supports, including our natural areas and wetlands. Coastal protection should work with, instead of against, nature to help make our communities more resilient, while protecting the environment we all depend on for urban life."

Cortney Koenig Worrall, President and CEO, Waterfront Alliance said, "The New York and New Jersey Congressional delegation has long understood the need for a regional solution to flooding and climate impacts, led by the Army Corps of Engineers. Today, 14 members of our Congressional delegation have, again, made it clear that the Corps must pursue a holistic plan that protects not just against the next Hurricane Sandy, but multiple climate threats, with a focus on the environmental justice and frontline communities – those that stand to lose the most.  Thank you, Rep. Velazquez and Goldman, forspearheading this critical push. We will continue to work with you and the entire delegation to promote an equitable, resilient, and comprehensive flood plan for the Harbor region."

Victoria Sanders, Research Analyst, New York City Environmental Justice Alliance said, "This show of support from our congressional partners is greatly appreciated and so important to the fight forenvironmental justice in USACE HATS plan. NYC-EJA and our partners have worked tirelessly to ensure that the most vulnerable communities are not excluded and unprotected from the final USACE plan for the NY-NJ region, and we are eager to see the Army Corps take the requirements of WRDA 2020 and 2022 seriously and update the plan accordingly, prior to reaching their Agency Decision Milestone in the coming months.”

Amy Chester, Managing Director of Rebuild by Design said, "A plan that doesn't include our communities is no plan at all. The communities have been clear in what they want to see – high engagement, high transparency and collaboration built into the project design of multi-hazard and multi-solutional interventions. We should not settle for less and we thank Congress for standing up for a stronger plan."

Tracy Brown, President of Riverkeeper said, “The bipartisan call from members of Congress to fix the Army Corps’ flawed plan for New York and New Jersey comes at a critical juncture. Twice now, Congress has told the Army Corps to take a more holistic view of protecting the metro region from climate change, including storm surge, sea level rise, heavy rainfall, and groundwater inundation, only to have the Corps revert to a myopic focus on storm surge gates, which cut off our waterways and trap pollution. A broad coalition of partners from across the region is calling for the Army Corps to heed the directives of Congress and revisit the study, to more comprehensively address all our flooding risks while taking into account environmental justice communities and environmentally significant waterways and wildlife. At this crucial inflection point, we need to get this right.”

Kate Boicourt, Director for Environmental Defense Fund’s Climate Resilient Coasts and Watersheds New York-New Jersey program said, “New York-New Jersey Harbor is home to our nation’s densest coastal metropolis. Any plan to mitigate flooding should address all the types of flooding we face, using the best available science. Without changes, the Corps’ plan puts communities at risk, perpetuates inequities and neglects the opportunity to build the future that communities deserve. In the 21st century, we need 21st century solutions that work better for people and nature. We thank Congress for working with local communities to ensure the Corps invests in a holistic approach to flood planning that benefits communities forgenerations to come.” 

Robert Freudenberg, Vice President for Energy & Environment at Regional Plan Association said, “Our region’s waterfront communities and ecosystems are enduring a multitude of worsening climate impacts that disproportionately hurt communities who have borne the burden of marginalization, discrimination and poor land use decisions for too long. As the very viability of the region is threatened, there is perhaps no more important study being carried out than HATS, and no greater need than to get the final approach right. We applaud this effort to seek a better plan from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that takes on all flooding threats, does right by our communities, and better integrates and protects the natural systems of our Harbor Estuary.”

Read the letter here and below:

Michael L. Connor
Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works United States Army Corps of Engineers
441 G Street NW
Washington, DC 20314-1000

Dear Assistant Secretary Connor,

We write to you expressing our concern that New York-New Jersey Harbor and Tributaries Focus Area Feasibility Study (HATS), and its upcoming Agency Decision Milestone (ADM), tentatively scheduled forrelease this summer, does not comply with the Water Resources Development Acts (WRDA) of 2020 and 2022 or President Biden’s Justice40 Initiative (J40). With the passage of WRDA, Congress directed the Army Corps to formulate a plan that protects the region from tidal and river flooding, heavy rainfall, groundwater emergence, erosion, sea level rise and storm surge. However, after seven years of planning, the Army Corps is proposing to spend $52.6 billion to protect our constituents from only one kind of flooding - storm

surge. Members of Congress worked diligently to pass WRDA on behalf of our constituents in communities that remain vulnerable to multiple flood threats, and we urge HATS to comply. To ignore the more frequent flooding threats that plague our region is an irresponsible use of taxpayer dollars. In addition, Assistant Secretary Connor outlines environmental justice (EJ) expectations in the USACE EJ and Justice40 Guidance and states that “environmental justice is achieved when everyone enjoys the same degree of protections and equal access to Civil Works programs and services to achieve a healthy environment.” Currently, the USACE’s plan does not

follow its own EJ and Justice40 guidance and does not appropriately center disadvantaged and EJ communities.

While we recognize that HATS has the potential to secure the protection of millions of residents in the New York-New Jersey metropolitan region from an increased frequency of storms and rising sea levels, the next phases of HATS and the protective structures that will result from the study must reflect Congressional directives specified in WRDA and the USACE EJ and J40 Guidance, namely:

• Measures that address multiple flooding threats
• Environmental justice and community engagement, including updating the cost-benefit analysis approach to ensure equity in the plan and expand the EJ areas within the region that it meaningfully protects
• Natural and nature-based features and nonstructural approaches over barriers
• Plans for a phased-approach, fast-tracking measures that protect critical infrastructure and environmental justice communities with a budget for adaptive management

To accomplish this, we are urging USACE to (1) promptly issue implementation guidance on applicable directives in 2020 and 2022 WRDA legislation, (2) factor that guidance into the current draft environmental impact study (DEIS) to conduct additional analyses and develop additional alternatives, (3) in the spirit of USACE EJ and J40 Guidance, ensure that disadvantaged communities are properly protected, and (4) issue a Supplemental DEIS for public review and comment before reaching the Agency Decision Milestone.

In the Water Resources Development Act of 2020 (WRDA 2020), Congress secured key changes to HATS, working closely with local coalitions and local sponsors to ensure the principles important to our constituents (e.g., equity, nature, community engagement, etc.) would be reflected in planning, to include directing USACE to “evaluate and address the impacts of low- frequency precipitation and sea-level rise on the study area.”

Building on WRDA 2020, Congress passed WRDA 2022, which, upon request of a non-federal interest, directs the USACE under Sec. 8106 to formulate alternatives to maximize the net benefits from the reduction of comprehensive flood risk within the geographic scope of the study from the isolated and compound effects of:

1. a riverine discharge of any magnitude or frequency;
2. inundation, wave attack, and erosion coinciding with a hurricane or coastal storm;
3. a tide of any magnitude or frequency;
4. a rainfall event of any magnitude or frequency;
5. seasonal variation in water levels;
6. groundwater emergence;
7. sea level rise;
8. subsidence; or
9. any other driver of flood risk affecting the study area.

These provisions in WRDA 2020 and 2022 apply now, and New York City has invoked Sec. 8106 for HATS as evidenced in their comment letter to the Army Corps, dated March 24, 2023: "We are pleased to see a new policy articulated in Section 8106 of WRDA 2022. USACE ‘shall formulate alternatives to maximize the net benefits from the reduction of the comprehensive flood risk’ that includes coastal storms, tidal flooding, and rainfall events.” Therefore, the Army Corps New York District is directed by law to adhere to these provisions, even if they have not yet received implementation guidance. HATS has moved forward without such implementation, as evidenced most recently by the closure of the public comment period of the Study’s Tier 1 Draft Environmental Impact Statement (Draft EIS) and hundreds of comments concerned with multiple flood hazards, local climate projections, threats from rain-driven storms like Hurricane Ida, and the "bathtub effect" that can result from storm surge barriers trapping water from rain-driven runoff and sewer overflows. These key issues must be addressed in the Tier 1 EIS, not as an afterthought in design. Our constituents and community coalitions have consistently raised concerns about USACE proposals, and public comments highlight that HATS conducted to date does not reflect the intent of Congress through WRDA 2020 and WRDA 2022, nor the intention of the USACE EJ and J40 Guidance.

As a reference, we have attached the May 26, 2021, letter to USACE signed by eighteen members of Congress that called for HATS to comply with 2020 WRDA directives. We are writing today to emphasize that the next Agency Decision Milestone and subsequent HATS developments must reflect full compliance with WRDA 2020 and WRDA 2022.

Thank you for prompt attention to these requests. We urge you to promptly issue the implementation guidance and use that to formulate a Supplemental DEIS that can be reviewed by the public, ensuring we meet the needs of constituents in the New York and New Jersey region.

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