Were You Flooded?
Author Archives: admin_GW
Floods and Storms Are Ravaging the Jersey Shore. Why Do We Keep Building It Back?
When Hurricane Sandy rammed the Jersey Shore on the night of Oct. 29, 2012, saltwater fisherman Nick Honachefsky was living in Camp Osborn, a community of tiny bungalows a mile south of Mantoloking on Barnegat Bay Island. Earlier that day, Honachefsky had taken a bottle of Captain Morgan rum with him on a walk down the beach, figuring the arrival of a hurricane meant it was time to start drinking and take a few pictures. The news that cops were banging on doors, telling people who were insisting on riding out the storm that they should write their Social Security numbers on their wrists so their bodies could be identified later — plus a phone call from his worried mom — made Honachefsky decide to spend the night at an ex-girlfriend’s house on the mainland.
A few hours later, the storm’s surge roared on top of a high tide across the skinny barrier island, opening broad new inlets as the Atlantic poured up Barnegat Bay. Most of the bungalows that made up Camp Osborn, including Honachefsky’s 750-square-foot house, were washed away. A friend of Honachefsky filmed the storm’s arrival. “He’s like, ‘I think I did see your house. It was the blue one, right? Yeah, it’s floating down Route 35. It’s on fire,’” Honachefksy remembers. When he was finally able to return to the site of Camp Osborn 10 days later, Honachefsky saw 30-foot flames of gas still shooting out of the ground. “It looked like the oil fields in Kuwait,” he says. An exploding transformer had kicked off a fire that continued to burn; there was no gas shutoff valve for the island.
By Susan Crawford. Read the full article here.
DECEIVED: The Destruction of Graniteville’s Forested Wetlands
By The Environment TV.
This video, from Staten Island’s Coalition for Wetlands and Forests, asks the question: Has Staten Island’s NYC Councilmember Debi Rose betrayed her constituents, the community of Graniteville.
For over four years Gabriella Velardi-Ward, an architect and environmentalist, among other fields of knowledge, has lead the fight to save these wetlands and forests based on many reasons: flooding is only one of them.
Through her fights in the court and street demonstrations, she and her members have stopped the bulldozers from tearing down the trees that held back the heavy waters from torrential rains and hurricanes until now. Although the group had the backing of the community, it’s elected officials overrode their wishes and allowed the builders to rip out the trees and pack the ground. Why? And can this still be reversed?
Staten Island, The Forgotten Green | DiverseCITY
On this episode, the stalled construction of a seawall and how it could lead to lives lost on Staten Island. The fight to save a very important wetland on the borough’s north shore from being bulldozed for a big box store. Why an effort to create a more expansive bluebelt is also a labor of love. Putting a fresh face on Freshkills Park, once the location of the much maligned “Staten Island Dump.” Then we profile a group that’s spent nearly half a century advocating for the island’s protected parkland.
I’ve Got A Secret
By The Environment TV.
Gabriella Velardi-Ward, founder and coordinator of the Staten Island Coalition for Wetlands and Forests (SICWF), let’s us in on the secret: The Graniteville Wetlands are being destroyed and this greatly effects the people living there RIGHT NOW.
Homes have been damaged and destroyed and there are rumors that some people have actually died during the recent hurricane, IDA, yet the local media has not covered this.
She, and members of her group who live there alongside her, have started interviewing and documenting what has happened and are trying to get the word out there with little success. But they are trying and continue to assist their neighbors as they have for the past 4 years or more.
Activists: Ida floods show need for Graniteville wetlands, pols should have protected BJ’s site
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — A group of activists gathered at Staten Island Borough Hall Monday afternoon to protest against a BJ’s Wholesale development currently being built on a portion of the Graniteville wetlands.
The group of about a dozen demonstrators, organized by Gabriella Velardi-Ward, the leader of the Staten Island Coalition of Wetlands and Forests, marched to the offices of Councilwoman Debi Rose (D-North Shore) and State Sen. Diane Savino (D-North Shore) and called out the politicians for a perceived lack of action to protect the natural area from development, just weeks after construction prep that included the removal of trees began at the embattled site.
By Joseph Ostapiuk. Read the full article here.
Full vacate orders issued to four Mariners Harbor homes in wake of Ida damage
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — The city Buildings Department (DOB) issued full vacate orders to four Mariners Harbor homes after it was discovered water damage from Hurricane Ida made cellar walls in the buildings structurally unstable.
Earlier Monday, the FDNY responded to Maple Parkway, near Spirit Lane, and evacuated a row of connected homes between 204 Maple Parkway and 188 Maple Parkway when firefighters observed significant water damage in the cellars of at least two of the homes.
DOB inspectors found “deflection at several load bearing walls in the cellars of the buildings, and it was determined that those cellar walls were no longer structurally stable,” said department spokesman Andrew Rudansky.
By Joseph Ostapiuk. Read the full article here.
Ida-Deluged NYC Drainage System All But Forgotten in Climate Battle
The unprecedented rainfall that remnants of Hurricane Ida dumped Wednesday night made New York City’s climate vulnerabilities starkly visible, less than two weeks after Tropical Storm Henri broke previous rain records.
Boulevards across boroughs could’ve been mistaken for rivers. Yankee Stadium became a lake. Waterfalls cascaded into subway stations.
The scenes were vastly different from those from the coastal flooding in 2012’s Superstorm Sandy, which prompted high-profile protection projects focused on waterfront areas vulnerable to storm surge and sea-level rise.
The recent deluges highlight how heavy rains have been largely left out of the equation, experts told THE CITY.
By Samantha Maldonado. Read the full article here.
THE BATTLE TO SAVE THE GRANITEVILLE WETLAND CONTINUES: AN UPDATE FROM GABRIELLA VELARDI WARD OF SI COALITION OF WETLANDS AND FORESTS
The Graniteville Wetland located along South Avenue in Staten Island has been a point of contention for residents who do not want the BJs Wholesale Club project to go forward. This project would cut down about 1,800 trees, and destroy the wetland that people living in the area, environmental conservationists, scientists, and others have stated protects the local area from flooding.
The community, which is defined by the USEPA as an Environmental Justice Community, was not consulted prior to the green-lighting of the project by the NYS DEC, and a public hearing was said to be not warranted. This is despite the receipt by the DEC of 1,700 letters, from both community members and concerned citizens, scientists, and politicians from around the country. It is also despite the fact that the Census showed a population of less than 5,000 residents in the area, making the number of letters received over one third of the number of residents.
