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Resiliency Planning for the Brooklyn Marie Terminal: A Preliminary Analysis


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OCTOBER 8, 2025

Prepared by the City Club of NY Waterfront Committee.

Klaus H. Jacob, principal analyst and author; John Shapiro, contributing author.


SUMMARY

The City Club of New York advocates for the upgrading of the Brooklyn Marine Terminal (BMT) to a prime maritime hub on the Brooklyn Waterfront, without building any housing on the site. The BMT faces the Buttermilk Channel, which separates it from Governors Island in the New York Inner Harbor. It includes Piers 7 to 12 and is located south-by-southwest of Brooklyn Bridge Park, which includes Piers 1 through 6.


Any realistic plan for the development of BMT as a modern maritime transshipment center and as the hub for a regional Blue Highway needs a sound and well-thought-out flood resiliency plan, not only for the long-term success of the site, but also for the Red Hook neighborhood; surge flooding enters not only from the immediate BMT and BMT-adjacent waterfront, but also through the back door from the Gowanus Canal. These coastal flood hazards are further amplified by inland flooding from severe rain events and rising groundwater levels.


It is conceivable to initiate BMT operations as a maritime center and hub for the Blue Highway without all resiliency measures in place upfront. A well-thought-out, time-staggered plan for the parallel development of maritime operations and the

implementation of resiliency measures seems not only feasible but also crucial for

avoiding future catastrophic or even substantial losses while initiating BMT harbor

operations, including Blue Highway operations, as soon as possible.


We propose a special resiliency task group be put together that represents BMT, Red Hook, Gowanus, and possibly other nearby Brooklyn communities, as well as experts from pertinent City of New York agencies, and is staffed with true engineering and flood prevention design professionals to come up with a comprehensive flood prevention plan that fully integrates any BMT flood resiliency measures with those of the nearby communities.


The Citywide Challenge

Climate Change. One of the primary challenges for any infrastructure project in New York City (NYC), particularly those located at or near the tidal waterfront, is the impact of climate change. Climate change includes more frequent and severe hurricanes and winter storms (“Nor’easters”), which, combined with rising sea levels, pose increasing hazards and loss potential from coastal storm flooding and even permanent inundation. Additionally, more severe and frequent extreme precipitation events impact adjacent inland areas. Combined, increased precipitation and rising sea levels raise the groundwater table. This fact must not be ignored when upgrading existing infrastructure systems (including transportation, utilities, and sewer systems) and designing new ones, as well as when addressing threats to existing housing, commercial, or industrial buildings.


For purposes of this analysis, we utilize quantitative forecasts for climate change,

including sea level rise, storm frequencies and intensities, and precipitation, as provided by the New York City Panel on Climate Change (NPCC). Through NYC legislation, the NPCC was tasked with creating official climate projections to be used by NYC agencies and for projects requiring NYC approval. The NPCC projections are based on the best available science and extend in some cases beyond the year 2100 (NYC-NPCC, 2019; NYC-DEP, 2025). The State of New York has, for all practical purposes, adopted essentially the same projections as NPCC for the NYC region, and compliance by communities is regulated by the NYS Community Risk and Resiliency Act (NYS-DEC-CRRA, 2019).


A severe long-term threat to communities at low topographic elevations (including large portions of Red Hook, but also in other districts and neighborhoods in all five boroughs of the city) is the rising groundwater level. It is fed by both increasing precipitation and rising sea levels, which first affect near-shore communities, even when protected by seawalls or levees, and gradually migrate inland as the pressure gradient from offshore to inland raises the groundwater level via slow flow through permeable sediments and rocks.


The salinity in the groundwater also tends to rise concurrently. Rising groundwater levels have been observed in some NYC communities for more than 100 years, especially in those neighborhoods where homes and commercial users had their own wells for internal water supply. Such pumping lowered the groundwater levels. When these units abandoned their own water wells and switched to public water supplies provided by the City via pipes, the water level rose and first flooded basements, but in some extreme cases, streets and low-lying areas in the cityscape also flooded.


With no clear upper limit for sea level rise, which is mainly dependent on global energy policies that reduce the world's reliance on fossil fuels as a significant source of energy, it is conceivable that rising groundwater levels will increasingly threaten many low-lying neighborhoods. Unless groundwater pumping can be provided on a community-wide basis using renewable energy (as opposed to fossil fuel-based energy), many of these neighborhoods could be doomed in the future and forced to be abandoned. Accordingly, options for such low-lying neighborhoods, including Red Hook, should be included in medium- and long-term adaptation and resiliency plans.


Resiliency. To be resilient means to survive any threats—whether from extreme short events or long-term climate and related hazard trends—with minimal impact and losses, and to be able to recover after an extreme event as quickly as possible and at affordable costs. It has been shown, including by U.S. Government assessments (NIBS 2019), that investment in resiliency typically has an exceedingly high benefit-to-cost ratio, ranging from four to 11(!), by avoiding potentially significant losses from future hazard events.


In the context of extreme climate events and long-term climate trends, as well as for any assets in general, creating resilience entails implementing several design and adaptation principles. These include:

1. Defending or protecting against coastal flooding with engineered structures, such as levees, dams, and barriers (e.g., the Lower Manhattan Coastal Resiliency project), as well as nature-assisted interventions, such as reconstructed wetlands, dune enhancement, and reefs (e.g., the Billion Oysters project).

2. Accommodating implies inviting and living with higher water elevations rather than protecting against them (e.g., by using raised or floating structures, or “wet- proofing” any assets in flood zones)

3. Retreat to higher inland locations. Obviously, for a marine terminal that by

definition and function must be located on the waterfront, this action is not an

option for BMT.

4. Operational Preparedness. This approach avoids at least some losses by

preparing for approaching storm surges or heavy precipitation events; it can be beneficial when significant capital investments to create long-term resiliency are not yet in place. Operational measures can therefore serve an essential transitional function, reducing present risk exposure before long-term resilience can be implemented.


Resiliency has a clear temporal aspect. This is especially important for infrastructure projects that require substantial capital investments and can have long expected lifetimes approaching or even exceeding a century. Multiple time horizons need to be considered:

1. Short-term resilience to be achieved for the current climate conditions,

meaning, for now, for several years into the near future, say into the 2030s.

2. Mid-term resiliency, say to the 2050s.

3. Long-term, sustainable resiliency, say beyond 2100.


The BMT Challenge

This summary on resiliency for the BMT project cannot provide the engineering or design details necessary to implement resiliency in an optimal, cost-beneficial manner. For each of the discussed options, sound engineering studies are required, and the tradeoff between safety and cost requires careful consideration. Since this proposal is in the urgent context of rapidly transforming the BMT into a maritime and Blue Highway hub, short- to mid-term measures are discussed in more detail than long-term measures.


Additionally, while we focus on the BMT site itself, we also comment below on the

essential connection to the adjacent Red Hook and Gowanus communities and the need to achieve their resilience in full coordination and cooperation with the BMT marine facility redevelopment. An integrated plan will be cost-beneficial for both BMT and the adjacent communities.


The resiliency options to be considered for just the BMT proper are:


Defending or Protecting BMT. Since the BMT must be accessible to shipping, levees or sea walls on its western “seaside” appear to be an unrealistic option. Nature-based solutions to reduce wave action are ruled out, as they would obstruct or unduly narrow navigable waters. To some extent, Governors Island, across the Buttermilk Channel, already provides a natural reduction in wave action.


In theory, only a regional defense solution could be envisioned. It could consist of a green-gray barrier system that protects the entire New York Harbor and Hudson River estuary, at least from current and future coastal storm surges. Such regional solutions were proposed many years ago by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ NY-NJ Harbor and Tributary Study, also known as HATS (USACE 2025), particularly in Alternative 2, which the Corps has stated is not its preferred option. Since HATS is far behind schedule and its future and funding are uncertain, neither the short-term nor the medium-term resilience of BMT can be relied on to come from harbor-wide regional solutions, such as those considered by HATS. Even so, such regional barrier systems alone do not provide long-term protection against sea level rise.


Protection by sea walls or levees on the eastern “landward” side of BMT, with possible multi-use purposes as park facilities, is not only an option but probably inevitable. The only measures to avoid such defensive structures on the land side of BMT would be to implement adequate flood protection along the entire periphery of the Red Hook and Gowanus neighborhoods. While this option needs full consideration for medium- and long-term designs, it is unrealistic to expect its implementation for short-term resiliency of BMT.


In either case, any protective structures on the landward side of BMT must be fully

coordinated and integrated with any flood protection measures for the Gowanus and Red Hook communities of Brooklyn. Otherwise, the BMT could be exposed to flood hazards from the east. Transportation access to BMT through or over the eastern, landward defensive structures must be guaranteed.


The question of design height of such structures is critical, both in terms of cost and safety over time. Any height below 14 feet NAVD88 (North American Vertical Datum of 1988) should be discarded, as 14 feet is at best a mid-term design height (into the 2050s). There should be full consideration of making additional land alongside the levees available (possibly temporarily used as parkland); this would allow for the future raising of the levee height, which requires widening their footprint by approximately two to three times the levee height increase.


Two variants of such levees associated with the BMT should be explored. The levees could be placed either inside the BMT site to separate the westerly, waterside loading/unloading docks and piers from the easterly adjacent storage, service, utility and support structures, with the effect that these structures are protected from coastal flooding; if the levees were to be placed outside, on the eastern landward periphery of the BMT site, then all these service structures would not be protected from coastal flooding and inundation from sea

level rise. In this case, these on-site structures would need to rely on Accommodation Measures (as outlined next).


Accommodation. Since defense against floods from the seaside by engineered structures, such as sea walls, is not a realistic option for piers/docks due to the need for ships to access them, various accommodation options emerge as technical resiliency measures.


Option 1: Raising pier-deck structures. One accommodation method is to raise

structures above the expected flood elevations, which increase over time. Since some piling beneath some of the piers on the BMT site is rotten, replacement is required. This opens the opportunity to install new pilings that would bring the working piers/docks to a higher elevation.


But to what elevation? For mid-term (2050s) resiliency, no pier-deck elevations below 14 feet above NAVD88 should be considered. If some of the raised piers are designed to last at least until 2100 (long-term), then pilings should be installed to allow pier-deck elevations of at least 18 feet above the North American Vertical Datum of 1988 (NAVD88). Note: 18 feet is the sum of the Superstorm Sandy 2012 storm surge elevation (about 12 feet NAVD88) and the NPCC’s 90-percentile of sea level rise for 2100 (about 6 feet).


The pilings would need to be designed to not only take the vertical loads of the dock platforms, cranes, equipment, and loaded/unloaded cargo, but also the lateral horizontal loads from docking ships, and from the wave action and winds imposed on the docks and docked ships. If necessary, vertical pilings may be supplemented with diagonal piling reinforcement to absorb lateral forces. Details depend on the geotechnical conditions of the sediments and the related needed piling density (number of piles per unit area) to achieve the necessary vertical and lateral strength. If the sediments are so soft that unreasonably long piles would be required to achieve the necessary lateral strength, diagonal piling or filling between the piles with crushed rock aggregate may help obtain the required lateral strength of pile groups supporting the pier decks.


If the levees discussed in the defending/protection section are placed on the

eastern landward periphery of the BMT site, any of the cargo storage areas, service, maintenance, or commercial buildings on the BMT site immediately landward of the piers would be exposed to the coastal storm flood hazards, which are worsening with time. In that case, large portions or all the structures on the BMT site, not just the piers, would need to be elevated individually, or better yet, placed on a platform covering all or most of the non-pier portions. The platform would need to be erected at the above-mentioned pier elevations (approximately 18 feet above NAVD88) to accommodate the long-term resilience of these storage, service, and utility structures. Proper access ramps across the levees or closable gates for road access on the eastern periphery of the BMT site would need to be constructed.


Suppose the levees are installed within the BMT site, just east and landward of the operating docks/piers. In that case, these storage, service, and utility structures do not need to be elevated, and the construction of a raised deck, as discussed above, to house such service structures can be avoided. Still, access across the internal levees and movement of cargo across them would need to be accommodated.


Option 2: Floating Piers. Floating piers held up by buoyancy have, at least in

principle, the advantage that they self-adjust to any sea level and therefore have no limitation to sea level rise into the future, or extreme storm surges. However, in practice, some limits exist, and adjustments over time are needed for any structures that hold those floating piers in place laterally, whether by vertical posts or by sub-horizontal, land-anchored arms, or by cabling to bottom anchors, often in the form of heavy weights resting on the sediments below. Floating piers have the advantage of being able to be arranged in various configurations, allowing for more flexible adaptation when changes in harbor operations or functions arise. Some technical issues with floating piers, for which engineering solutions exist, include minimizing the tilting of floating piers under variable surface loads and swaying during intense wave or wind action. A combination of fixed-height piers on piling

and floating piers may provide an optimal solution.


One important option is to use floating piers for the initial phase of BMT

redevelopment while the existing defunct piers are removed and replaced with raised, fixed piers. This may enable the BMT to be used as a Blue Highway hub faster than waiting until all piers are replaced with elevated ones.


It is less likely that many of the service structures (for cargo storage, utilities, boat maintenance, and other functions) on the BMT site will be floating structures. To protect the fixed service structures, located landward of floating piers, from coastal flooding, the earlier discussed site-interior levees are the likely solution, rather than levees on the eastern periphery of the BMT site, unless service structures are elevated on stilts or foundations above flood zone elevations.


Floating docks have been used for many decades for shipbuilding and

maintenance, as well as for wharves and dry docks. They are less common for piers in principal transshipment harbors that service large ocean-going container ships. But some exist (e.g., in the U.S., the largest is in Valdez, Alaska; this floating dock can berth 50,000-ton container ships).


Operational Resilience Measures. In the initial phase of renewed BMT operations (say in the early phases of the Blue Highway), when not all structural resilience measures are yet completed, but also at the final stages when all structural resilience measures are in place, operational safety measures and emergency preparedness can substantially reduce coastal storm surge flood losses and impacts. For severe storms, there is typically a 48-hour window before the storms' predicted landfall, during which sensitive cargo and equipment can be removed to high ground, or smaller boats can be moved into more sheltered areas in the Hudson River estuary, where wave action is reduced.


Therefore, the BMT operator should develop a comprehensive master emergency plan early on that involves all stakeholders, both on and off the BMT site. Such a plan must be well thought out; may need external contractors and other resources to be available on short notice; must be rehearsed on an annual basis; and coordinated with the neighborhoods and various NYC agencies, since clogged transportation escape routes can quickly develop, and some services, including those provided by utilities, may be shut down before the storm makes landfall.


The Neighborhood Challenge

The integration of and coordination and cooperation between BMT resiliency and that of the adjacent Red Hook and Gowanus Districts is a necessity.


Even at current climate conditions, the BMT-adjacent neighborhoods of Red Hook and Gowanus have severe flooding issues. Flooding occurs not only from the direct waterfront of the New York Inner Harbor, but also through the unprotected Gowanus Canal. Not only do coastal storm surges and even fair-weather nuisance inundations cause flooding, but also inland street flooding during extreme rainfall events. These flood events, without effective countermeasures, will become increasingly severe and more frequent as climate change advances and intensifies.


A fully integrated resiliency master plan for BMT and the named neighborhoods may bring potential savings to both BMT and the adjacent communities, potentially reducing costs for both new resiliency designs and during operations. This is especially so since floodwaters may impinge not only from the waterfront facing the New York Harbor, but also from behind through the Gowanus Canal as long as it has no gates to close it during storms; such gates need to be further amended by levees of sufficient height that extend from future Gowanus Canal gates or barriers, on either side of the Canal facing the Inner Harbor, and extend to the west of the gates all the way to the levees that protect BMT.


While the NYC Department of Design and Construction (DDC) prepared a presentation (NYC DDC 2024) as part of the Red Hook Resiliency Project (RHRP) with a vision for a proposed coastal flood defense for Red Hook, its design height of 10 feet above NAVD88 is totally insufficient, especially in the BMT context. Higher design heights need additional land to increase base width. Additionally, the DDC vision did not include any levees on the western side of the Gowanus Canal, thereby making the rest of the proposed defense lines virtually ineffective.


A final complicating factor is the current and increasingly higher water table. The

neighborhood is at existential risk, even if protective structures are built on the entire periphery of Red Hook, including Gowanus. Red Hook will eventually be considerably below sea level. Due to soil conditions dating to when most of Red Hook (and Gowanus) was marshland, water will infiltrate up from the ground, seeking to be level with the sea. Every permeable subsurface is a potential “leak.” Similarly, the combined stormwater/sewer lines lead to outfalls that will be overtopped not only by storm events alone (as happened during Superstorm Sandy) but also by future high tides. This will bring water and sewage into the neighborhood through sewer holes and even bathroom fixtures on the ground floor, unless the outfalls are redesigned to be one-directional and augmented with pumps to force water out, perhaps supplemented by large-scale storage

tanks for the sewage.


Putting all this together, it is conceivable that there is no possible, let alone cost-effective, way to keep Red Hook “dry” in the long term. This may help explain why current City plans are limited to 10 feet NAVD88, meaning that beyond 2050, they may at best address nuisance floods (e.g., storm surges of as little as 5 feet).


Implications

Sorting out these technical and community issues is precisely why the City Club of

New York’s Waterfront Committee proposes that resiliency planning be combined

for the BMT, Red Hook, and Gowanus.


We do not believe it is good policy to plan the resiliency of BMT site development in isolation from a coherent plan for safeguarding the people, businesses, and property of the entire neighborhood, let alone before the community is fully informed of the risks and options.


While the City’s current housing proposal is not the subject of this memo, these resiliency challenges raise an environmental justice issue. Most Red Hook residents live in public housing and lack the income necessary for housing mobility in NYC. In contrast, most of the anticipated households in the EDC-proposed housing development on the BMT site are expected to be very affluent, based on projected rents for the development. Nationally, environmental justice activists are characterizing such phenomena as the use of climate change adaptation as a means of urban renewal that serves gentrification and developer

interests, rather than existing communities, many of which (like Red Hook) are mainly working class and of color.


On the other hand, maritime uses and local industry create good jobs. Since they serve the local economy and infrastructure, they address the cost of living and doing business in our metropolis. The maritime option evaluated here is, relative to the current plan, a low investment. Many maritime uses are also capable of being shifted within the site. As such, many of these uses can proceed immediately, unlike housing, which is contingent on a raised plateau, environmental and engineering studies, and over a billion dollars of

infrastructure investment.


Most importantly, many of the resiliency ideas presented here for maritime uses

would protect the entire neighborhood, not just the portion that EDC would devote to essentially luxury housing.


References

NIBS, 2019: Natural Hazards Mitigation Saves, 2019 Report. PDF file downloadable from:

NYS-DEC-CRRA, 2019: New York State Community Risk and Resiliency Act of 2014, updated 2019. See details and further links at: https://dec.ny.gov/environmental-protection/climate-change/effects- impacts; and https://dec.ny.gov/environmental-protection/climate-change/new-york-response/crra

NYC-DEP, 2025: Deliver; Engineering; Protect: DEP’s Long-Range Vision. PDF downloadable from: https://www.nyc.gov/assets/dep/downloads/pdf/about/strategic-plan/long-range-vision-spread.pdf

NYC-NPCC, 2019: New York City Panel on Climate Change 2019 Report (NPCC3). PDF file

downloadable from https://a860-

NPCC4, is currently in draft form and can be inspected at https://climateassessment.nyc/assessments/

USACE, 2025: US Army Corps of Engineers. NY-NJ Harbor and Tributary Study. Multiple links exist. We recommend: https://www.nan.usace.army.mil/Missions/Civil-Works/Projects-in-New-York/NY-NJ-HATS/Prior-NYNJHAT-Study-Reports-and-Presentations/.

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