Park to protect NYC from rising sea levels

In an unprecedented effort to protect lower Manhattan from the effects of climate change, New York City has just broken ground on a massive project to install 2.4 miles of flood walls, flood gates and other barriers along the East River.

This report produced by Jillian Kitchener.

Lower Manhattan is getting a facelift... That is - crews are actually lifting East River Park by eight to ten feet, to protect the area from rising water due to global warming.

Jainey Bavishi is the director of the New York City Mayor’s Office of Climate Resiliency.

“This is a project that is going to protect 110,000 people on the Lower East Side of Manhattan - 28,000 of whom live in public housing.

This is a community that was really devastated by Hurricane Sandy.

The floodwaters came over the coastal edge and really went quite far into the neighborhood." In 2012, Superstorm Sandy destroyed or damaged hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses in coastal New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.

Now scientists warn that rising sea levels are threatening coastal areas with the likelihood of future floods.

Officials in Manhattan have found a way to offer 2.4 miles of greater protection downtown... and leisurely breathing space for millions of residents.

New York City’s design and construction commissioner, Jamie Torres-Springer: "The idea of just building a flood wall and just leaving it sitting there in place just didn't work.

So instead, what we're able to do for most of the project extent is we're able to really put the flood wall underground and then raise the new park that we're going to reconstruct on top of it.

You won't know the flood walls there, but we'll get an entirely new park with all the benefits of that.

That's the general design approach.” With 520 miles of coastline in New York City, protecting it from storm surge is a monumental task.

The entire project - with a price tag of 1.45 billion dollars - is scheduled to be completed in 2025.