A Pivotal Election in a City Council District Where Flooding is a Way of Life
Incessant tidal flooding has forced locals to live ‘around the lunar calendar.’
Residents of New York City Council District 32 — which includes the western Rockaway peninsula and parts of Southeast Queens — will head to the polls on Nov. 2 to choose their next councilmember. But not all of the candidates have a detailed plan for environmental resiliency, despite the need for one in this part of New York. Of the three — Democrat Felicia Singh, Republican Joann Ariola, and Independent Kenichi Wilson — only Singh has outlined specific plans to combat climate-induced threats.
Large portions of District 32 are tidal wetlands where roads and buildings were originally built over thin veneers of sand and dirt. As a result, low-lying neighborhoods like Hamilton Beach, Howard Beach, and Broad Channel are routinely inundated with “sunny-day flooding,” high tides of around six feet or more that easily surpass street level several days per month.
“People who have lived [here] all their lives will tell you that the streets have always flooded once in a while, but they’re noticing that it’s higher and more frequent than they’ve ever remembered, and that’s because of sea-level rise,” according to Dr. Brett Branco, executive director of the Science and Resilience Institute at Jamaica Bay and an associate professor at the CUNY Graduate Center.
Incessant tidal flooding has forced locals to live ‘around the lunar calendar.’ Several residents told Labor New York about the frustrations of relocating vehicles, missing work days, and disrupting everyday activities such as grocery shopping and family gatherings.
“Community members have to concern [themselves] with, ‘Do I have a doctor’s appointment?’, ‘Am I getting a delivery?’, ‘Can I get to work?’, ‘Can my kids get to school?’, ‘Can they get home from school?’, ‘Can I get home from work?’” said Roger Gendron, a lifelong resident of Hamilton Beach and president of the New Hamilton Beach Civic Association. “And that’s just the everyday stuff, not to mention whatever damage the saltwater does to property.”
Excessive rainfall from recent Hurricanes Ida and Henri has also compounded stress among locals still reeling from Superstorm Sandy in 2012, when an 11-foot storm surge resulted in the deaths of seven District 32 residents and an estimated $19 billion in damage city-wide. Gendron said the sunny-day flooding “triggers anxiety for a lot of people. It’s nothing compared to Sandy, but the panic sets in.”
Although several environmental studies going back decades have been commissioned by the city, the U.S. Army Corps Engineers, and private environmental groups, the only executed strategy in Howard Beach and Hamilton Beach has been a hyper-local rezoning effort, which “limits new residential developments” and enables homeowners to retrofit their properties.
Robby Schwach, deputy chief of staff to current District 32 Councilmember Eric Ulrich, said, “Before the city would put a [tidal] gate in Howard Beach — if there’s a possibility that the Army Corps and the federal government [would] come in with a much larger project to protect all of Jamaica Bay — that would probably be the better solution.” But the Army Corps’ efforts have been on hold for several years, leaving affected residents anxiously waiting for action. Candidate Singh hopes to fix that.
In a recent op-ed published by The Rockaway Times, Singh noted the city’s spending on resiliency projects in nearby communities, like the $341 million Rockaways boardwalk rebuild and the $336 million Atlantic Shorefront Resiliency Project. She said, “While these projects are great, they are exclusively focused on building systems of resilience for the Atlantic Beach side of the Rockaways. By comparison, the equally vulnerable Jamaica Bay side of the Rockaways and its predominantly Black and Brown residents have been under-resourced and neglected.”
Singh is a teacher and a lifelong resident of Ozone Park who belongs to the Our Neighbors Civic Association of Ozone Park, served as the Queens Borough Director of Amplify Her, and on the Assembly District 23 County Committee. Her environmental agenda focuses on bringing agencies and residents together to create a comprehensive resiliency plan, strengthening climate education, expanding green jobs, protecting public housing, safeguarding essential utilities and updating sewer infrastructure.
When asked how she plans to obtain funding for these projects, Singh said in an email interview that “saving small businesses is a platform that runs across all political affiliations.” She added, “Resiliency impacts our entire district whether you are on the coast or not.”
The other two candidates in the race lack specific plans for dealing with the district’s environmental crises. Republican Joann Ariola — chair of the Queens County GOP, director of intergovernmental affairs for the MediSys Health Network, member of Community Board 10, and president of the Howard Beach Lindenwood Civic Association — has centered her campaign around improving public safety, strengthening community-police relations, and supporting small businesses impacted by the pandemic.
Her campaign did not respond to requests for comment, including three emails and two phone calls, on her environmental resiliency agenda. However, in a recent interview with the Gotham Gazette, Ariola generally promised to “introduce legislation as a Council member to promote resilience as well as push for investments in climate-resistant infrastructure.”
A former auxiliary unit officer and chair of Community Board 9, Independent candidate Kenichi Wilson’s priorities include improving education and public safety, supporting small businesses, and expanding transportation options. He does not have a functioning campaign website and could not be reached for comment.
Participation in local elections tends to be low. According to data from the New York City Board of Elections, there were 97,851 registered voters in District 32 as of February (54,764 registered Democrats and 17,826 Republicans), but only 10,271 Democrats and 2,900 Republicans voted in the June primaries. This is despite the fact that the race has attracted significant media attention after Wilson switched from Democrat to third-party when a surrogate for primary candidate Michael Scala sued him and questioned the validity of his campaign petition signatures.
District 32 has also been a target for Democrats hoping to eliminate the last Republican-held City Council seat in Queens. Singh is confident that her team’s turnout efforts will be successful. She said, “We nearly doubled the [number] of Democratic voters from the 2017 primary to the 2021 primary.”
As of Oct. 12, Singh is leading the pack in campaign donations; she has raised more than $406,000 in public and private funds, compared to Ariola’s $308,000 and Wilson’s $108,000.
Despite the district’s uncertain political future, community members have found creative ways to help each other during crises. There are several local Facebook groups where residents share live videos and pictures of flooding; they were especially active earlier this month when high tides measured at more than seven feet in Howard Beach.
Residents also work with local researchers on efforts like the Community Flood Watch Project, a collaboration between New York Sea Grant and the Science and Resilience Institute at Jamaica Bay that uses ‘citizen science’ to compile a flooding database. Witnesses document details such as time of day, depth and direction to help inform city leaders and illustrate the negative community impacts of flooding.
Gendron hopes this spirit of collaboration is adopted by the next councilmember. “They’ll need to listen to community members, who understand flooding best. But there’s no way the city alone can fix this; it’s got to be a joint effort across the board: federal, state, and city.”
