Living with Water in a Climate-Changed Future
- Roz Palmer
- 6 days ago
- 5 min read
As of June 2024, FLUSH helps its clients tackle water-related climate challenges. In New York and many other cities, the rainwater solution has traditionally been to push it down impermeable streets, disappear it into the combined sewerage and wastewater network, and flush it out to sea. Our solution for the sea has been to lift ourselves above it and wall it out.
Those historical fixes are now failing in part because of climate change impacts, including cloudbursts (short, heavy rains), sea-level rise, and more dangerous storm surges. Despite ever-improving engineering solutions, the historical narrative that we can control water by installing enough infrastructure needs to be rewritten. In Australia, where I’ve lived for the past seven years, Aboriginal custodianship of land, water, and sky is informing a shift in our relationship with floodwater and in how we design the infrastructure that manages it.
To continue to unravel the myth of humans’ control over water, we need to demonstrate that nature-based solutions (think rain garden, living seawall) may be a better option for water management than gray infrastructure (think levee, concrete seawall) in certain cases precisely because they make room for water and all its benefits, allowing us to connect to it instead of push it away.
The floodproof myth
Our current infrastructure simply isn’t designed to handle the volume of water we now face. In just the past four years, NYC recorded three of its highest-ever rainfall levels. The city’s stormwater infrastructure was built for 1.75 inches of rainfall per hour. Hurricane Ida dropped 3.15 inches in one hour in 2021. Sea level rise and more severe storm surges have also shown us that even the highest levees and strongest seawalls might not withstand the worst storms, and if they fail, floodwaters can rise higher, move faster, and become more destructive than they would have been had no infrastructure existed.
Yet the myth persists that large-scale infrastructure that (tries to) separate us from the water will save us, and that flood-resilience measures guarantee a flood-free future. How we communicate about our water engineering abilities needs to shift in the era of climate change.
The Jewel Street Plan for a low-lying neighborhood near Jamaica Bay is a good example of the challenge of communicating flood risk and viable options for mitigating it. To install functioning sewerage in this flood-prone area (yes, there are neighborhoods in NYC without sewage pipes), the streets will need to be raised so that sewage flows from a higher elevation to Spring Creek. While the city is making this investment to improve drainage, it also means individual houses may be at greater risk of flooding because they will be below street level. Resiliency measures for those houses (such as raising HVAC systems) do not guarantee zero flood damage.
Even with the best modelling of future rainfall conditions in a warmer climate and the most sophisticated drainage techniques, it is impossible to know at this stage — when residents are being asked to decide whether to stay or leave their neighborhood — how much water will flow where. This is partly because of climate change. While historical trends used to somewhat reliably predict future events, the instability of our climate caused by accelerated warming (among many other factors) means we can no longer rely just on the past to project the future. (For a deeper dive on climate modeling, AdaptNSW has a great explainer of the ‘Limitations to using climate system models’.)
The global uncertainty we are facing is hard to talk about and even harder for frontline communities to hear because we, like all animals, are programmed to seek control and knowledge that we are safe. It makes sense that we advocate for 100% floodproof infrastructure, but ‘100% floodproof’ is a myth, even for the most sophisticated water managers in the world.
Room for water
Some of our best ‘floodproof’ infrastructure, like levees and sea walls, are to our own detriment. These water-control measures disconnect us from waterways and associated cultural practices and livelihoods, and imperil complex ecosystems, biodiverse habitats, and the replenishment of nutrients for farming.
Nature-based solutions use natural processes and ecosystems to control water, and include initiatives like rain gardens, living seawalls, bluebelts, and wetland restoration, which provide multiple benefits beyond flood management. Gray infrastructure is typically made of concrete and steel and includes built assets like levees and seawalls. While there is a place for fully protecting certain areas with gray infrastructure, we must seriously consider nature-based solutions for every urban project. Particularly in dense urban environments where space is limited, our public infrastructures must be multi-purpose to contribute to social, environmental, and economic health. These solutions, like the nearly 100 bluebelts on Staten Island, can be successful flood management tools while providing habitat, water filtration, urban heat mitigation, and open-space amenities.
Accurately capturing the costs of gray infrastructure while measuring the comprehensive benefits of nature-based solutions is a nascent but growing practice. Consistent standards for capturing social, environmental, and economic costs and benefits will allow us to demonstrate that nature-based solutions may be preferable to traditional gray infrastructure in many cases.
Connecting with water
Gray infrastructure makes it easy to assume we are 100% protected from water because we are separated, whereas nature-based solutions allow us to connect to water by integrating it into our landscapes. Through integration, we can not only support environmental health by more closely mimicking natural systems, but also strategically and psychologically embrace its increased presence: climate change won’t let us keep it out, so let’s invite it in.
There are many ways we’re reconnecting with water, from reframing humans’ relationship with it, to naturalizing waterways, to collectively maintaining local gardens.
In Sydney, the indigenous urban design practitioners I worked with always encouraged 'room for the water' in our infrastructure projects, drawing on millennia of water stewardship knowledge. They ask design practitioners to ‘support Country to thrive’ by taking care instead of taking control. The National Emergency Management Agency and water utilities there are taking natural solutions seriously, with great results. The Johnston Creek Naturalization project by Sydney Water is providing benefits both in water control and filtration as well as a more beautiful park for people to enjoy.
Rebuild by Design is building an Atlas of Inspiration to document innovative solutions, which can be used to document holistic benefits, real costs, and lessons learned. Meanwhile, thousands of on-the-ground groups like the RAIN Collective in NYC are motivating community members to care for their neighborhood infrastructure so it will thrive and provide greater benefits over time while making people more comfortable inviting water in.
It's not that there should be no attempt to redirect water to minimize risk, particularly where dense housing is well-established. But we built homes on and near water because we have a connection to it.
What compelling, positive narrative will minimize flooding, mitigate risk, and keep us connected to the water? Can we maintain and steward a healthy connection to waterways while equitably protecting existing indispensable infrastructures? How do decision-makers communicate uncertainty about future flow while activating people to shape their own safe lives with water?
FLUSH works on addressing these questions with its clients: build community trust, communicate complex technical information clearly, and involve residents and local leaders as agents of change.
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