About the Red Hook Interim Flood Protection Measures
The New York City Office of Emergency Management (NYCEM), in coordination with New York City Mayor’s Office of Recovery and Resiliency (ORR), launched the Interim Flood Protection Measures (IFPM) Program in 2016 to identify sites that would benefit from temporary, deployable flood protection as the City continues to advance its resiliency agenda. These deployable measures are designed to reduce, but not eliminate coastal flood risk and are not designed to Sandy-level flooding. As of 12/4/17, this initiative has resulted in 43 sites that will have deployable flood protection by a City emergency contractor during a potential coastal flooding event.
Red Hook is the first neighborhood-scale site to benefit from the program and the “pre-deployable” elements (700 Linear feet of “HESCOs” — large earth filled cubes — see photos below) were installed in August of 2017. The line of flood protection will stretch from the Ikea parking lot to Conover Street when these pre-deployed elements are connected with “just-in-time” elements (1,220 Linear Feet of “Tiger Dams” — stackable water-filled tubes — see photos below) in the event coastal flooding is predicted. The just-in-time elements close gaps that are left open to allow for day-to-day pedestrian and vehicular traffic in “blue sky” conditions. A community-based beautification project was developed in conjunction with this installation and a series of murals will be installed on the HESCOs in early 2018.
As part of this project, NYCEM and ORR announced an Open Call for mural designs to be applied to structures that are part of the Interim Flood Protection Measures (IFPM) program, which have been deployed along Beard and Reed Streets in Red Hook, Brooklyn.
