The Progressive Way to Save Cities From Superstorms
The New Republic
By: Geoff Dembicki
Mychal Johnson has lived in the area for more than 20 years and is co-founder of a community group called South Bronx Unite. His group noticed that the Corps proposal, which contained miles of Harlem River floodwalls stretching around the southwest corner of the borough, didn’t seem to protect a rail line connected to a major waste management facility that processes all of the Bronx’s household garbage, up to 4,000 tons per day. “They’d never thought about it,” he claimed. If that rail line was flooded during a storm surge, “that means we’ll be inundated with the garbage that’s left at this site from all over the Bronx,” he said. (Wisemiller, for his part, said this type of feedback is crucial for the Army Corps plan: “We look forward to further dialogue with the city, as well as with those local neighborhoods.”)
