From Douglas Hill
It may be that New York City will have to suffer hundreds drowned as London did in 1953, or more than a thousand as New Orleans did last year before the “basic philosophy” changes from evacuating the city to protecting it with storm surge barriers (3 June, p 8). In the meantime, wild exaggerations of their likely cost are not helpful.
The Thames barrier, about as wide as the Arthur Kill in New York City, cost about $2.4 billion in today’s dollars. The Eastern Scheldt barrier in the Netherlands, which is 80 per cent wider than The Narrows – the largest barrier span needed in New York – cost about $1.8 billion. A similar structure for the East river was estimated at $1.6 billion by an engineering firm. The ballpark figure to protect the inner city is thus $6 billion, in contrast to the statement that “estimates of the possible cost start at tens of billions of dollars”.
As your article noted, decades passed after the disaster before a storm surge barrier was in place to protect London, and the same was true in the Netherlands and in Venice, Italy. What are needed now for New York are the engineering feasibility and environmental studies to move the development of barriers along, at least to minimise the subsequent exposure time and incidentally to provide a genuine estimate of their cost.
Huntington, New York, US
