FINAL REPORT Water Challenges for Coastal Cities - from the Dutch Delta to New York Harbor

FINAL REPORT Water Challenges for Coastal Cities - From the Dutch Delta to New York Harbor Liberty Science Center, September 9 - 10, 2009 Then we anchored and saw that it was a very good harbour for all winds, and rode all night. From the ship’s log of Half Moon, Henry Hudson’s ship, September 11, 1609. 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS IntroductIons 3 by Roland Lewis – President and CEO Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance 4 by Tracy Metz – journalist NRC Handelsblad 4 reports from fourteen H209 sessIons 7 Alternative Financing Opportunities: Public-Private Partnerships for Water Projects 8 Against the Storm: a Report Card, Implementing Waterfront Protective Systems 9 Maintaining Drinking Water Quality 10 The Green Brain: Driving the Environmental Message Home 11 Decentralized and Self Sufficient Water Systems 12 Moving from Defense to Accommodation in Coastal Regions 13 Disaster and Emergency Management 14 The Future of Ports and Port Cities: Positioning for the Global Economy 15 INTRODUCTIONS Spatial Planning and Water Management for New Waterfronts 16 How Transportation Drives Development; Access to Our Waterfront – The New York Waterfront Experience 17 Innovative (green) Stormwater Management, Succes Stories from Amsterdam and New York 18 A systems approach to flood protection; comparing the Hudson Estuary Basin and the Dutch Delta 19 A tale of TWO cities: climate change adaptation challenges & strategies in NYC and Rotterdam 20 Coastal management using natural processes 21 program H209 forum 23 LIst of deLegates 35 H209 In tHe medIa 43 Wall Street Journal 44 Het Parool 45 On the Internet 46 new generatIon competItIon 57 exhibItIon at tHe LIberty scIence center 61 H209 forum / final report 4 5 introduction H209 Forum American example of Hurricane Katrina. From that protect their population from the North vital information with our Dutch counter-parts. The hard part is now before us by roland Lewis there Dutch and American water experts, Sea shared their expertise. American activists as we work to take the Dutch/American water lessons gleaned from the H209 governmental leaders, activists and academics that have forced their government to enact and conference in New Jersey and translate them into water policy that will protect took a long and unflinching look at a great vari- enforce environmental water laws shared their and enhance our respective regions for decades to come. That is a Quadricenten- The Quadricentennial year is ebbing and it is time take stock of a year of ety of water challenges that face our respective stories. And planners from both sides of the nial legacy that the participants in that long ago cultural exchange between the celebration and commemoration. Of the many and varied events that nations. The challenges facing the Dutch Delta Atlantic rolled up their sleeves to work collabo- original Americans, the Lenape, and the Dutch representatives on the Half Moon marked the milestone of Henry Hudson’s arrival to our shores 400 years and the New York Harbor are daunting; but the ratively and imaginatively on water and water- would be amazed at and proud of. ago, few matched the intellectual depth, the robust Dutch and American spirited discussion that was a signature of the front solutions that might be applied to the New cultural and intellectual exchange and the topical importance of the H209 event was positive. York Harbor. Water Conference held at the Liberty Science Center in September 09. The 500 attendees were split almost evenly The Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance was proud The conference began with a sobering look at examples of the destructive power amongst Dutch and Americans and each of the to be a sponsor of the H209 conference. Our Alli- water can bring with discussion of the famous 1955 Netherlands flood when the sessions kept the flavor of a bi-lateral exchange. ance Partners attended in great numbers both dykes were breached and much of the country was ravaged and the more recent The designers of the Dutch engineering marvels as presenters and as audience. We exchanged roland Lewis is President and cEo of Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance. introduction H209: an impression Mississippi in 1993, for example, and 80 billion which is particularly relevant for New York, which with its 522 miles of coastline by tracy Metz dollars’worth of damage and over 1800 dead in is the American city the most susceptible to coastal flooding. Rotterdam is also Katrina in 2005. moving toward integrating more water in the existing city with measures such as roofparks and waterplazas, explains Paula Verhoeven, director of the Rotterdam Of course a conference called ‘H209: Water Challenges for Coastal Cities’ is rights within the United States: ,,Offer a drink But where is the money going to come from? In Climate Initiative. ,,We still need to find space to store 800,000 cubic meters of about water. In September 2009, on the occasion of Henry Hudson’s arrival of water to a westerner and he’ll say, ‘Whisky is the US, certainly in the present economic crisis, water in the city.” There is admiration for the Dutch regulatory framework and on Manhattan four centuries ago, some 500 experts from the Nether- what we drink, water is what we fight over’. many municipalities are already ‘maxed out’ on focus on prevention – while at the same time the Dutch are seeking ways to lands and the United States gather in the Liberty Science Center to discuss what they can borrow from their residents. Ideas simplify those regulations. new ways of dealing with water in times of climate change. During two Is water too cheap? Yes, many say. Drinking are floated for a water infrastructure bank and full days of plenary sessions, workshops and design roundtables all the water is subsidized and cheap in the US, one a national water tax. Another speaker wonders But planners are powerless unless there is political will to back them up. In the modern-day usual suspects make an appearance: seepage and leakage and speaker states - ,,In this country we pay 5 to 6 whether a water tax doesn’t actually hide the US there is a sense of alarm that America’s infrastructure is falling apart – see sea level rise, adaptation and regulation, the snail syndrome and the day- times more for cable entertainment than we real cost of infrastructure: ,,Ratepayers pay back the bridge in Minneapolis, see New Orleans. ,,We need reinvestment, but do we after-tomorrow syndrome. But below all these timely and urgent matters do for our water!” - and as a result the system is loans, but they don’t see or appreciate the real have the political will?” one speaker asked with pressing urgency. In the plenary runs a more profound theme: the way we deal with water is a manifesta- overused and undermaintained. Mayor Abouta- costs of a bridge or a waste water treatment session at the start of H209, Jud Hill of Summit Global Management describes tion of our culture, of our mentality, and more specifically, our willingness leb of Rotterdam notes that drinking water is plant.” water as ,,the unfortunate stepchild for government that also has to pay for to accept risk. Risk to land, risk to life. also cheap in the Netherlands, and although the schools, police, potholes – all of which do more for a politician’s image than the system is well maintained, ,,that makes it hard The Dutch water boards use a different model, replacement of an invisible waterpipe underground.” Another delegate won- To the amazement of many American delegates, the Dutch have taken prevention to explain that there is a problem”. However, explains Johan de Bondt, director of the water- ders aloud: ,,Where is the initiative for elected officials to take this on? They are to such a degree of perfection that the country has no evacuation plans, and less price is not the only way to manage constrained board Amstel Gooi and Vecht: ,,The water boards dependent on campaign contributions and therefore on development.” than 5 percent of the households have flood insurance. (by the way, the Dutch do goods, says Rohit Aggarwala of the New York are independent and invest in long term plan- see American disaster management as a leading example). To the amazement of Mayor’s Office for Long-Term Planning and Sus- ning. 40 percent of our budget goes to main- In the aftermath of disaster much is possible, as governor of the Dutch province the Dutch, the 180 multi-million dollar homes that were swept out to sea from the tainability. ,,Government can impose prices and taining and renewing the water management of Zeeland, Karla Peijs, points out. She calls Katrina ,,a second wake-up call” for coast of Long Island, have all been rebuilt on the same vulnerable spot. Paul Farmer, regulate access.” system.” And Harrie Noy, CEO of Arcadis, points the Netherlands after the 1953 flood in Zeeland which left over 1100 dead in one executive director of the American Planning Association and one of H209’s modera- out that in the Netherlands, beneficiaries pay for night. Zeeland and Louisiana have signed a joint memorandum of understand- tors, notes that there is no planning or governmental body with the power to say An American mayor, no doubt speaking from their drinking water through tax, but protection ing to work together on water management and crisis control. Within Europe, that that land will not be redeveloped. ,,In the US people are more used to the idea experience, remarkts that taxpayers are of against protection against flooding is a national Rotterdam Mayor Aboutaleb sees a need for a different kind of coalition: ,,50 to of loss and to living in a state of flux.” Cees Veerman, chairman of H209 and of the course reluctant to pay more for their water issue financed by the government.

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