Students working to restore sand dunes in Coney Island. Here's why activists say their help is needed.
It's considered one of the most polluted waterways in New York City. For decades, environmental activists have been pushing to designate the beach there as a
Superfund site
so it can one day be eligible for a massive cleanup.
The
National Wildlife Federation
partners with the
NYC Parks Department,
American Littoral Society
, and
Coney Island Beautification Project
in an effort to fight beach erosion and restore the shoreline.
"Nature-based solutions have been shown to be holistic and sustainable, and they work. Sand dunes will help to mitigate the next storm surge, chronic tidal floods and chronic erosion that is experienced by these communities," said Abby Jordan, the federation's climate science program manager.
Dozens of homes stand steps away from the beach, a community that was inundated and devastated by Superstorm Sandy in 2012. Jordan, who is from Brighton Beach, says trauma from the storm pushed her into this line of work.
"Being waist-deep in storm surge is something I will never forget. That is not something any young person needs to live through," she recalled, saying the experience changed her life.
Georgina Cullman, an ecologist from the NYC Parks Department, says student volunteers can help labor-intensive initiatives like this be more effective.
"The Parks Department takes care of 12% of the land area of New York City," she said. "But we need neighborhoods and our neighbors to take an interest and love and care for these spaces, too."
Social worker Franky Jordan brought his students from Liberation Diploma Plus, a transfer high school that focuses on kids who fell behind.
"We know that students learn in different ways, and actually getting their hands dirty is one of the best ways for students to get involved," he said.
Public school students spent hours not just learning about the environment, but actively rebuilding it.
"It could help save lives eventually, like in the future," said 11th grader Nakaya Wry.
Rico St. Hilaire, a recent graduate, liked the program so much last year that he returned to learn more about the way this prevents flooding.
"It's basically forming a whole net, which, like, keeps it in place, which I think is really cool," he told CBS News New York's Hannah Kliger.
They're leaving more than just footprints in the sand; their work is shaping a stronger and greener shoreline.
Have a story idea or tip in Brooklyn? Email Hannah by
CLICKING HERE
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2 days ago
Coastal communities restoring marshes, dunes, reefs to protect against rising seas
In San Francisco Bay, salt ponds created more than a century ago are reverting to marshland. Along the New York and New Jersey coasts, beaches ravaged by Superstorm Sandy underwent extensive restoration. In Alabama, a rebuilt spit of land is shielding a historic town and providing wildlife habitat. Coastal communities nationwide are ramping up efforts to fend off rising seas, higher tides and stronger storm surges that are chewing away at coastlines, pushing saltwater farther inland and threatening ecosystems and communities. The need for coastal restoration has been in the spotlight this month after Louisiana officials canceled a $3 billion project because of objections from the fishing industry and concerns about rising costs. The Mid-Barataria project was projected to rebuild more than 20 square miles (32 square kilometers) of land over about 50 years by diverting sediment-laden water from the Mississippi River. But work continues on many other projects in Louisiana and around the country, including barrier islands, saltwater marshes, shellfish reefs and other natural features that provided protection before they were destroyed or degraded by development. Communities are also building flood walls, berms and levees to protect areas that lack adequate natural protection. The work has become more urgent as climate change causes more intense and destructive storms and leads to sea-level rise that puts hundreds of communities and tens of millions of people at risk, scientists say. 'The sooner we can make these coastlines more resilient the better,' said Doug George, a geological oceanographer at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. In the U.S., perhaps nowhere is more vulnerable than the hurricane-prone Gulf Coast. Louisiana alone has lost more than 2,000 square miles (5,180 square kilometers) of coastline — more than any other state — over the past century, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Historically, sediment deposited by the Mississippi and other rivers rebuilt land and nourished shore-buffering marshes. But that function was disrupted by the construction of channels and levees, along with other development. The dangers were magnified in 2005 when Hurricane Katrina breached flood walls and levees, submerging 80% of New Orleans and killing almost 1,400 people — followed closely by Hurricane Rita. Afterward, the state formed the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority to lessen risks from storm surges and stem land loss. Most of the almost $18 billion spent in the past 20 years was to shore up levees, flood walls and other structures, the authority said. Dozens of other projects are completed, planned or underway, including rebuilding marshes and other habitat with sediment dredged from waterways and restoring river flow to areas that have lacked it for years. On Louisiana's Chandeleur Islands, a barrier island chain, the state will pump in sand to help rebuild them, which will dampen storm surges and benefit sea turtles and other wildlife, said Katie Freer-Leonards, who leads development of the state's 2029 coastal master plan. The authority is digging a channel to allow water and sediment from the Mississippi River to flow into part of Maurepas Swamp, a roughly 218-square-mile forested wetland northwest of New Orleans that has been 'dying for over a century' because of levees, project manager Brad Miller said. Sediment dredged from elsewhere also has been pumped into thousands of acres of sinking marshes to nourish them and raise their levels. The same is happening in other states. In Bayou La Batre, Alabama — a fishing village built in the late 1700s — The Nature Conservancy built breakwaters offshore, then pumped in sediment and built ridges, now covered with vegetation. That created a 'speed bump' that has helped protect the town from erosion, said Judy Haner, the Alabama Nature Conservancy's coastal programs director. The conservancy and others also have been creating miles of oyster reefs, and are acquiring tracts of land away from the coast to allow habitats to move as seawater encroaches. Such efforts won't prevent all land losses, but in Louisiana, 'cumulatively, they could make a big difference," said Denise Reed, a research scientist who is working on Louisiana's coastal master plan. 'It could buy us some time.' On the West Coast, communities vulnerable to sea-level rise also could see more flooding from increasingly intense atmospheric rivers, which carry water vapor from the ocean and dump huge amounts of rain in a short period of time. So tidal marshes and estuaries drained for agriculture and industry are being restored along the entire coast, both for habitat and coastal protection. Habitat restoration, not climate change, was the primary consideration when planning began about 20 years ago to restore marshland along the south end of San Francisco Bay, destroyed when ponds were created to harvest sea salt. But as sediment naturally fills in ponds and marsh plants return, 'we're realizing that ... marshes absorb wave energy, storm surge and the force of high tides,' said Dave Halsing, executive project manager at the California State Coastal Conservancy. That helps protect whatever is behind them, including sea walls and land that otherwise could be inundated or washed away, including some of California's most expensive real estate, near Silicon Valley. Projects also are underway along Alaska's coast and in Hawaii, where native residents are rebuilding ancient rocky enclosures originally intended to trap fish, but which also protect against storm surge. Thirteen years after Superstorm Sandy swamped the Atlantic coast, communities still are restoring natural buffers and building other protective structures. Sandy began as a fairly routine hurricane in the fall of 2012 before merging with other storms, stretching for a record 1,000 miles and pushing enormous amounts of ocean water into coastal communities. But the threat of future storm surges could be even greater because sea levels in some areas could rise as much as three feet within 50 years, said Donald E. Cresitello, a coastal engineer and senior coastal planner for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The Corps rebuilt beaches, dunes and human-made structures from Massachusetts to Virginia and now is turning to areas farther inland that are increasingly vulnerable to more powerful storm surges, Cresitello said. 'If there's a river coming to the coast, that storm surge has the potential to just ride up that river," depending on the storm, he said. A 'phenomenal amount' of the U.S. population lives and works along its coasts, so protecting those areas is important to the U.S. economy, said George, the NOAA scientist. But it is also important to preserve generations of culture, he said. 'When you think about why people should care ... it's a whole way of life,' George said. ___ ___
San Francisco Chronicle
2 days ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Coastal communities restoring marshes, dunes, reefs to protect against rising seas and storm surges
In San Francisco Bay, salt ponds created more than a century ago are reverting to marshland. Along the New York and New Jersey coasts, beaches ravaged by Superstorm Sandy underwent extensive restoration. In Alabama, a rebuilt spit of land is shielding a historic town and providing wildlife habitat. Coastal communities nationwide are ramping up efforts to fend off rising seas, higher tides and stronger storm surges that are chewing away at coastlines, pushing saltwater farther inland and threatening ecosystems and communities. The need for coastal restoration has been in the spotlight this month after Louisiana officials canceled a $3 billion project because of objections from the fishing industry and concerns about rising costs. The Mid-Barataria project was projected to rebuild more than 20 square miles (32 square kilometers) of land over about 50 years by diverting sediment-laden water from the Mississippi River. But work continues on many other projects in Louisiana and around the country, including barrier islands, saltwater marshes, shellfish reefs and other natural features that provided protection before they were destroyed or degraded by development. Communities are also building flood walls, berms and levees to protect areas that lack adequate natural protection. The work has become more urgent as climate change causes more intense and destructive storms and leads to sea-level rise that puts hundreds of communities and tens of millions of people at risk, scientists say. 'The sooner we can make these coastlines more resilient the better,' said Doug George, a geological oceanographer at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Gulf Coast In the U.S., perhaps nowhere is more vulnerable than the hurricane-prone Gulf Coast. Louisiana alone has lost more than 2,000 square miles (5,180 square kilometers) of coastline — more than any other state — over the past century, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Historically, sediment deposited by the Mississippi and other rivers rebuilt land and nourished shore-buffering marshes. But that function was disrupted by the construction of channels and levees, along with other development. The dangers were magnified in 2005 when Hurricane Katrina breached flood walls and levees, submerging 80% of New Orleans and killing almost 1,400 people — followed closely by Hurricane Rita. Afterward, the state formed the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority to lessen risks from storm surges and stem land loss. Most of the almost $18 billion spent in the past 20 years was to shore up levees, flood walls and other structures, the authority said. Dozens of other projects are completed, planned or underway, including rebuilding marshes and other habitat with sediment dredged from waterways and restoring river flow to areas that have lacked it for years. On Louisiana's Chandeleur Islands, a barrier island chain, the state will pump in sand to help rebuild them, which will dampen storm surges and benefit sea turtles and other wildlife, said Katie Freer-Leonards, who leads development of the state's 2029 coastal master plan. The authority is digging a channel to allow water and sediment from the Mississippi River to flow into part of Maurepas Swamp, a roughly 218-square-mile forested wetland northwest of New Orleans that has been 'dying for over a century' because of levees, project manager Brad Miller said. Sediment dredged from elsewhere also has been pumped into thousands of acres of sinking marshes to nourish them and raise their levels. The same is happening in other states. In Bayou La Batre, Alabama — a fishing village built in the late 1700s — The Nature Conservancy built breakwaters offshore, then pumped in sediment and built ridges, now covered with vegetation. That created a 'speed bump' that has helped protect the town from erosion, said Judy Haner, the Alabama Nature Conservancy's coastal programs director. The conservancy and others also have been creating miles of oyster reefs, and are acquiring tracts of land away from the coast to allow habitats to move as seawater encroaches. Such efforts won't prevent all land losses, but in Louisiana, 'cumulatively, they could make a big difference," said Denise Reed, a research scientist who is working on Louisiana's coastal master plan. 'It could buy us some time.' Pacific Coast On the West Coast, communities vulnerable to sea-level rise also could see more flooding from increasingly intense atmospheric rivers, which carry water vapor from the ocean and dump huge amounts of rain in a short period of time. So tidal marshes and estuaries drained for agriculture and industry are being restored along the entire coast, both for habitat and coastal protection. Habitat restoration, not climate change, was the primary consideration when planning began about 20 years ago to restore marshland along the south end of San Francisco Bay, destroyed when ponds were created to harvest sea salt. But as sediment naturally fills in ponds and marsh plants return, 'we're realizing that ... marshes absorb wave energy, storm surge and the force of high tides,' said Dave Halsing, executive project manager at the California State Coastal Conservancy. That helps protect whatever is behind them, including sea walls and land that otherwise could be inundated or washed away, including some of California's most expensive real estate, near Silicon Valley. Projects also are underway along Alaska's coast and in Hawaii, where native residents are rebuilding ancient rocky enclosures originally intended to trap fish, but which also protect against storm surge. Atlantic Coast Thirteen years after Superstorm Sandy swamped the Atlantic coast, communities still are restoring natural buffers and building other protective structures. Sandy began as a fairly routine hurricane in the fall of 2012 before merging with other storms, stretching for a record 1,000 miles and pushing enormous amounts of ocean water into coastal communities. But the threat of future storm surges could be even greater because sea levels in some areas could rise as much as three feet within 50 years, said Donald E. Cresitello, a coastal engineer and senior coastal planner for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The Corps rebuilt beaches, dunes and human-made structures from Massachusetts to Virginia and now is turning to areas farther inland that are increasingly vulnerable to more powerful storm surges, Cresitello said. 'If there's a river coming to the coast, that storm surge has the potential to just ride up that river," depending on the storm, he said. A 'phenomenal amount' of the U.S. population lives and works along its coasts, so protecting those areas is important to the U.S. economy, said George, the NOAA scientist. But it is also important to preserve generations of culture, he said. 'When you think about why people should care ... it's a whole way of life,' George said. ___
Medscape
06-08-2025
- Medscape
Port Delivery System Outperforms Injections for DME
Implantation in the eye of the port delivery system loaded with a bolus of the antivascular endothelial growth factor ranibizumab was associated with similar improvements in visual acuity after 2 years as intravitreal injections with ranibizumab in people with diabetic macular edema, results of a subset analysis of a phase 3 trial have shown. However, anatomical improvements were more profound in the eyes treated with the port system, and they did not progress onto proliferative diabetic retinopathy or have any reports of endophthalmitis, whereas a portion of the injected eyes did, Jordan Graff, MD, reported at the American Society of Retina Specialists (ASRS) 2025 Annual Meeting in Long Beach, California. Jordan Graff, MD 'The port delivery system provides excellent pharmacokinetics and disease control with vision comparable to monthly injection and a reduction in edema that was superior to an idealized standard-of-care injection model,' Graff, a vitreoretinal surgeon at Barnet Dulaney Perkins Eye Center in Phoenix, told Medscape Medical News . 'When we looked at complicating factors, we found that the safety outcome signals were essentially equal,' he added. Study Results The subset analysis included 241 patients with diabetic macular edema in both eyes from the phase 3 Pagoda trial. In this subset, the participants had the port system implanted in the eye with worse visual acuity and central subfield thickness, an anatomical measure of edema in the eye based on optical coherence tomography. The other eye, referred to as the fellow eye, was treated with intravitreal injections of ranibizumab on the basis of the clinician's discretion. The port system is an implant about the size of a grain of rice, which is inserted into the eye. It consists of a reservoir designed to be filled with 0.2 mL of 100 mg/mL ranibizumab by injection. The implant releases the drug into the eye over 6 months for diabetic macular edema and neovascular age-related macular edema, and over 9 months for diabetic retinopathy. Participants in the Pagoda trial received the implant after 4 monthly loading doses of ranibizumab. The FDA approved the implant in February 2022. In the subset analysis, the eyes with the port system received on average nine treatments over 2 years, including the four loading doses, and one initial and four refills. The fellow eyes received 12 injections, Graff reported in presenting the results. Visual acuity improvements were similar in both groups, Graff said. The eyes with the port implants improved from 64.2 ETRDS letters at entry to 74.3 at 2 years, about 20/50 to 20/32 in terms of Snellen visual acuity; the fellow eyes from 69.5 to 75.2 letters (20/40 to 20/32 Snellen). 'What was a surprise and really encouraging to find was that the study eyes with the port, which were the worse eyes, ultimately did better than the eyes that were given ad-lib access to repeated injections in an idealized standard-of-care environment,' Graff told Medscape Medical News. Central subfield thickness in the port eyes improved from 497.8 microns upon enrollment to 274.5 microns at 2 years, Graff said. For the fellow eyes, the improvement was less dramatic: from 399.1 to 331 microns. The lower the measure, the less extensive the macular edema. The subset analysis also looked at the proportion of eyes in each group that had more than a two-step improvement in Diabetic Retinopathy Severity Score, a measure of disease activity. Slightly more than half — 50.2% — of the port eyes experienced such an improvement at 2 years vs 31.7% of the fellow eyes. Graff added the rates of endophthalmitis were similar in both groups: one patient in each. None of the eyes with the port system had an implant dislocation. The rates of vitreous hemorrhage were 10% in the port eyes and 7.5% in the fellow eyes. No eyes in the port group progressed to proliferative diabetic retinopathy, whereas seven of the injection eyes did, he said. After completing a patient preference questionnaire, 77.5% of participants said they preferred the port to standard injections, Graff said. 'Those points give us the chance to pause as retinal surgeons and think, 'If I'm not already implementing this in my diabetic patients, I need to give this another look,'' Graff told Medscape Medical News . 'We are seeing the collective learnings of using the port delivery platform starting to take effect.' Study Strengths, Limitations 'The findings reveal that in patients with bilateral diabetic macular edema that the port delivery system actually works quite well,' Raj Maturi, MD, a vitreoretinal surgeon at Midwest Eye Institute and Retina Partners Midwest in Carmel, Indiana, told Medscape Medical News . 'The visual acuity gains in this eye compared to the fellow eye that was treated are greater. It's possible this happened because they started off with worse vision to begin with, but they improved quite a bit nonetheless.' Raj Maturi, MD Maturi noted that the 12 injections the fellow eyes received over the 2-year study was 'a little low,' as the label indication recommends monthly injections. Knowing the protocol investigators followed to administer injections to the fellow eye would help to better understand those outcomes, he said. 'An ultimate strength' of the analysis was to use both routes of administration in each patient, Maturi said. 'It takes care of all the variables, as it is two eyes of the same subject, so all the systemic variables have essentially been eliminated,' he said. The fact that the fellow eyes did not improve as much as the port eyes may indicate that the chronic drug exposure the implant provides may be better than the intimate exposure of injections. 'This study helps me promote port delivery system treatment for diabetic retinopathy,' Maturi said. The Pagoda trial was funded by Genentech. Graff reported having relationships with Regeneron Pharmaceuticals and Genentech. Maturi reported having relationships with AbbVie.
