Close to $29 million in FEMA funding awarded in January to the Brooklyn Navy Yard will replace existing boilers and fuel oil tanks and reinforce other key infrastructure at the developing manufacturing and tech hub in New York City to be storm resilient. 

New York Senate Democrats Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand and Rep. Nydia Velazquez (D-N.Y.) announced the funding to replace equipment housed in Building 41A and elevate the system above flood elevation at the former 300-acre naval shipbuilding site, located along three miles of the East River in Brooklyn, N.Y.

“As one of New York City’s premier working waterfront industrial hubs, we are proud to be home to more than 550 businesses and 13,000 workers, but we also know that we are vulnerable to extreme weather events,” says Lindsay Greene, president and CEO of the Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corp., a not-for-profit entity that serves as the yard’s real estate developer and property manager for its owner, the city.  “This federal award will help us restore and modernize campus infrastructure that was badly damaged by Hurricane Sandy." she adds, "and catalyze short-term projects" identified in the site's Resilience Strategy.

“We are currently sketching out a project timeline that will include infrastructure assessment and the design phase for Building 41A as next steps, followed by the distribution of a procurement or solicitation to hire a contractor,” says a corporation spokesperson, set to occur “sometime later this year.”

Hurricane Sandy brought 80 mph winds and 14-ft storm surges that caused $100 million worth of damage to the yard in 2012, says the resilience strategy, a 147-page report. When 48 in, of “brackish water” rose above the finished floor of Building 41A, electrical motors, wiring, conduits, plumbing, insulation and control instrumentation for the steam boilers and the fuel oil storage system were extensively damaged in the building, it notes.

That damage and more since have underscored need to develop “a proactive, innovative strategy to advance climate adaptation and protect the Yard’s infrastructure business,” the report notes. 

The Navy Yard and its consultant, Westford, Mass.-based Ramboll Engineering, worked to identify “risks, constraints and opportunities,” says the corporation. Among its goals are developing “protection measures to support the [its] mission, historic interior and working waterfront and to integrate coastal resilience practices into design solutions,” it says. 

Ramboll, with its parent based in Denmark, employed Scalgo, a Danish modeling platform recently expanded to the U.S. as a member of Navy Yard-based tech incubator Newlab, to model coastal and precipitation-based flooding based on climate hazard projections, the yard corporation says. These included 1% extreme water level events in 2018, in 2050 and n 2100.  For precipitation-based flooding, the scenarios included a 1% return period storm event of 60-minute duration in 2018, 2050 and 2080.

“Our resilience strategy includes an integrated approach that looks at compound sources of flooding and multi-functional flood protection measures,” the corporation says. Some under preliminary consideration include deployable flood barriers for protecting building perimeters that align with industry trends and can achieve ease of storage and assembly, its report notes.  

For stormwater management, Ramboll may incorporate Blue-Green Infrastructure (elements into improved open space. This sustainable approach to managing urban flood risk integrates portions of urban landscapes and natural water bodies. One consideration is a floodable plaza that can capture stormwater runoff from upland areas. The strategy also recommends more in-depth stormwater investigation, sewer system mapping, pipe assessment and comprehensive modeling.

Dating to 1801, the Brooklyn Navy Yard served as a shipbuilding center and was in continuous operation until 1966, when it was decommissioned and sold to the city—with its largest expansion since World War II now underway.