Can NY Infrastructure Handle Floods, Intense Heat?

Flooded subways, bridges deteriorating in the hot sun, rising seas nipping at the edges of Manhattan -- they are all possible effects of global warming that a panel is considering as it studies how the city's infrastructure will hold up to climate change.

The panel of scientists, government officials and private sector representatives met Tuesday for the first time as part of Mayor Michael Bloomberg's plan to address global warming in New York City.

Bloomberg has already begun taking actions to start reducing output of such gases as carbon dioxide and methane, which essentially trap energy from the sun and warm the earth's surface. To reach his goal of a 30 percent reduction in carbon emissions by 2030, the city is doing things like ordering all taxis to be hybrids by 2012 and retrofitting city buildings to meet greener standards.

Another part of Bloomberg's plan is to brace the city's infrastructure for potential consequences like more catastrophic storms, hotter temperatures and a rising sea level. The Climate Change Adaptation Task Force that met at City Hall on Tuesday will begin its work by studying the city's infrastructure to better understand how prepared it is for some of those possibilities.

"We have to adapt to the environmental changes that have already taken place, or that we can reasonably expect will occur because of climate change," Bloomberg said.

Experts on the panel said the potential consequences of global warming could cause more frequent storms, flooding throughout the city's coastal and lowland areas, repeated blackouts on a power grid stressed to its limits, bridges that deteriorate under the heat and other disastrous scenarios.

"The city was built with an assumption of an environmental baseline, and climate change in many ways changes that baseline," said William Solecki, director of the Institute for Sustainable Cities at Hunter College, and co-chair of the panel. "Some of these transformations can potentially be catastrophic as large storms; others might be more subtle and difficult to discern over the short term."

The group has been asked to produce a report for the mayor in one year. It will include an inventory of existing infrastructure that may already be at risk, plus plans to make those areas more secure. The panel has also been asked to draft guidelines for new infrastructure that take into account anticipated effects of climate change.

from the Associated Press