Future Manhattan flood gates on display on Lower East Side. Here's how they are designed to work.
With the push of a button, New York City officials say they'll soon be able to deploy flip-up flood gates that are being placed underneath the FDR Drive to protect Manhattan from extreme floodwaters.
The gates, which are part of the city's Brooklyn Bridge-Montgomery Coastal Resilience Project, are expected to be completed by May of 2026 and will run from Montgomery Street to the Brooklyn Bridge.
90 gates will protect the Lower East Side
The high-tech barriers were on display Monday near South Street and Pike Slip. Tom Foley, the commissioner of the city's Department of Design and Construction, said the barriers will be activated days before a storm.
"We'll have over 90 flip-up gates that will be deployed in less than three minutes," Foley said.
Slowly but surely, the flood gates are making an appearance on the Lower East Side.
"It's more than being new and innovative. It protects over 120,000 people that live in this community and the economic center of the nation," Deputy Mayor for Operations Meera Joshi said Monday.
Foley said the permanent, yet hidden, infrastructure will be the opposite of an eyesore for New Yorkers.
"And when it's not flipped up we have our bike paths to our left line, an amazing sightline to the East River, Brooklyn Bridge, Williamsburg Bridge, and maybe even do some fishing," Foley said.
Superstorm Sandy's devastation still top of mind for many
Several feet away from the East River, the deployable flip‑up barriers and flood walls are part of measures aimed at protecting the city's coastline from severe storms -- a vulnerability, of course, emphasized by Superstorm Sandy, which struck the region back in late October of 2012.
"It was worse than anybody could have thought," Lower East Side resident Alfonso Salamanca said of the devastating storm.
Salamanca said he remembers the impacts of Sandy and hopes he never sees a repeat.
"Depending on what the magnitude of the phenomenon is -- is going to determine if it works as it is right now," Salamanca said of the gates.
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