Your guide to NYC's public proceedings.
TESTIMONY
Testimony by Elijah Hutchinson, Executive Director of MOCEJ, on the climate crisis and ULURP challenges
0:13:07
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6 min
Elijah Hutchinson outlines the severe climate threats facing New York City, including flooding and extreme heat, emphasizing the disproportionate impact on vulnerable communities and the economic costs.
He argues for scaling up climate infrastructure but identifies the current ULURP process as a significant barrier to projects involving streets, sidewalks, waterfront areas, and city-owned property needed for resilience measures like flood protection and solar installations.
Hutchinson requests charter revisions to expedite these processes, particularly concerning small property acquisitions, street grade changes, work on mapped streets, and site selection for climate infrastructure.
- NYC faces significant threats from sea-level rise, increased rainfall, and extreme heat, with major economic and health costs.
- Investing in resilience infrastructure offers substantial returns by avoiding future losses.
- ULURP requirements complicate and delay projects involving property acquisition, street modifications, waterfront access, and installing solar on city property.
- Streets and sidewalks are crucial "climate corridors" but current processes hinder their adaptation.
- Streamlining ULURP for specific climate-related actions is needed to accelerate resilience efforts.
Elijah Hutchinson
0:13:07
Thank you so much for the commission for allowing me to be here today.
0:13:10
Truly appreciate it.
0:13:11
Good evening.
0:13:12
My name is Elijah Hutchinson, and I'm the executive director of the mayor's office of climate and environmental justice.
Richard R. Buery Jr.
0:13:17
Excuse me.
0:13:18
I'm sorry.
0:13:18
One second.
0:13:18
If you could stay, could we may have questions when the panel ends?
0:13:21
Thank you so much.
0:13:22
I reclaim my time.
Elijah Hutchinson
0:13:27
New York City is in a climate crisis now.
0:13:30
Yes.
0:13:32
Climate threats including storm water, coastal, and groundwater flooding continue to challenge the city while sea level rise is making these types of flooding worse.
0:13:40
The New York City panel on climate change or NPCC, our local body of climate scientists, projects almost two feet of sea level rise by the twenty fifties and more than five feet of sea level rise by the '21 by 2100.
0:13:53
By the twenty eighties, the number of days per year with rainfall, they are expected to exceed two inches that are expected to exceed two inches are projected to double.
0:14:02
And heat is the deadliest threat from climate change in New York City with more than five hundred heat related deaths on average each year in New York City.
0:14:12
And we know from our environmental justice report that that black New Yorkers are twice as likely to die from heat in New York City than white New Yorkers.
0:14:20
The NPCC projects that in the next decade, we could have over fifty days a year with maximum temperatures at or above 90 degrees, nearly two months more of very hot weather, and that's like adding an extra month of summer that we're not used to and that our city is not designed for.
0:14:36
Delivering climate infrastructure protects New Yorkers and modernizing our infrastructure also brings significant economic benefits.
0:14:43
Climate events generate annual health related economic costs of over 4,000,000,000 and result in hundreds of deaths in New York City every year according to our VIA report released in 2024.
0:14:55
Many of the areas of of the city are vulnerable to coastal storms as New York City has more than 520 miles of coastline, at one sixth of which, lies within the one hundred year flood plain, exposing over 400,000 residents to heightened flood risks.
0:15:13
And this area represents $250,000,000,000 in property value at risk, and includes over 14,000 businesses that employ more than a quarter million people in New York City.
0:15:24
Spending money on resilience pays off as the US Chamber of Commerce found that for every dollar we spend on resilience, $13 is saved.
0:15:32
And New York City's own resilience financing task force found that 50,000,000,000 of resilient infrastructure projects would protect New York City and avoid over 220,000,000,000 in physical, social, and economic losses projected through 2100, paying for itself many times over.
0:15:51
Over the past fifteen years, New York City has led the country in build building innovative climate infrastructure, green infrastructure to capture our stormwater, coastal protection projects that keep hundreds of thousands of people out of harm harm's way, and energy efficient building systems that provide heating and cooling without polluting our neighborhood's air.
0:16:09
We have learned and are continuing to learn how to design and build projects that bring multiple benefits to our communities, but now we need to scale in order to build climate infrastructure for all of our neighborhoods that will be impacted by extreme weather, particularly our most vulnerable communities.
0:16:24
So how can the Charter Revision Commission help?
0:16:27
First, we need to make it easier to use our streets and sidewalks, the backbone of New York City, in new ways to prevent flooding, provide shared open space for New Yorkers, and to support new public electric infrastructure that will power our cars and replace fossil fuel powered building heating systems while also providing cooling.
0:16:44
Our rights of way or our streets and our sidewalks are climate corridors.
0:16:49
We are redesigning them to support healthy ways to move around our city, absorb storm water, charge electric vehicles, and keep batteries for scooters out of people's homes, and provide community space that is shaded by trees.
0:17:01
Our current system of establishing legal right of ways was created long before we understood the concept of climate change, and we can no longer freeze our public space in place, we must be more nimble to respond, particularly on the waterfront.
0:17:15
But our building in our streets is complicated.
0:17:18
First, we often have we often have to acquire slivers of property we can to start a project.
0:17:24
In order to acquire that property, we have to go through ULURP.
0:17:27
If we want to raise a road to protect against flooding, again, we have to go through ULURP.
0:17:32
And much of our waterfront is mapped streets or paper streets extending beyond the shoreline and marginal streets such as bulkheads.
0:17:42
So almost all of this work that we have to do to build on our waterfront includes public access and and and includes changing streets that may not even exist in real life but are subject to ULURP.
0:17:55
If we can speed up this process to build in our streets, reducing requirements for small acquisitions, changing our street street grade, work on map streets that are currently underused without going through ULURP, we will create a pathway to build shaded flood protective corridors, public curbside EV charging, and for the district thermal heating and cooling systems of the future.
0:18:16
Second, we also need to leverage other types of city owned property, including looking at ways we can use the that we can install city sorry, that we can install climate infrastructure like solar panels on city owned property.
0:18:31
The charter requires that we go through ULURP when making changes on city property, including site selection.
0:18:36
So it's important that we work with city facilities that are trying to install solar on their sites.
0:18:44
ULURP applies.
0:18:46
And even when we're trying to make neighborhoods healthier, safer, and greener, like resilience project and waterfront access, that must be located on city owned land, the charter tends to provide the charter provides ambiguous language for the application of site selection ULURP that has been expanded upon through courts.
0:19:04
Finally, my office is working through dozens of stakeholders and city agencies to create a voluntary and equitable program for New Yorkers to voluntarily sell their homes when faced with insurmountable flood risks.
0:19:14
The program is currently in development with lessons learned from previous buyout programs and involving extensive public engagement.
0:19:21
But, of course, this will involve ULURP.
0:19:25
If we need to acquire city owned properties, we're make any program that the city would advance functionally obsolete and would not allow us to use those areas for public better public uses.
0:19:37
And so we come to the CRC hoping that we can address both the ULURP, the SiteGround acquisition issues, and the map street issues that prevent us from using our waterfront in our streets for climate change.