[link removed]
[link removed]
[link removed]
[link removed]
[link removed]
Reporter's Dispatch
City Limits' journalists open their notebooks
[link removed]
NYC Public Schools Are Flooding. What Are We Doing About It?
On Sept. 29, I dropped my then 3-month-old son off at daycare in the morning thinking it would be a Friday like any other. It wasn't.
A flash flood that day put the entire city under a state of emergency and shut down half of the city's subway lines, including the one closest to my house. I had to walk over 20 blocks to pick up my son and carry him back home in the pouring rain.
The caretakers at my son's daycare who made it into work were stranded, unable to return home. Many of their own kids had to get picked up by relatives since they couldn't make it there themselves. Around the city, 356 schools experienced flooding that required cleanup that day, according to the Department of Education (DOE).
The whole ordeal got me thinking: when we talk about climate change-related extreme weather events like this one, why do we rarely talk about schools? How are children, parents and teachers being impacted by growing storms and flash floods? Schools are a fundamental part of what makes our society tick and yet dozens of panels I have attended on climate change never include teachers. Most articles I read on the issue never quote students. Why aren't they a part of this conversation?
I decided to write a short article that laid out some of the infrastructure projects the city is working on to protect schools from climate change-related disasters. But my short article quickly turned into a larger investigation―the topic was begging for a deep dive.
I started looking for data on how flooding was affecting schools, but there wasn't much out there. So I started asking my sources. ALIGN, one of the environmental groups that I interviewed for the story, told me the Comptroller's Office would be able to help since they are tracking the city's progress on climate through an online dashboard tool.
At first, the Comptroller's climate team pulled up data from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to come up with a list of how many schools are situated in a 100-year floodplain, or areas that face a 1 percent annual risk of flooding due to coastal storms. They found that 9.5 percent of school buildings fit that description, a number that will increase to almost 12 percent by 2050 as climate change worsens.
I wondered if they could take that search a step further: what about flash flooding?
By compiling data from the New York City Panel on Climate Change and New York’s Department of Environmental Protections (DEP), they found that over 28 percent of public school buildings are currently at risk of extreme stormwater flooding. Of those 383 schools, over 41 percent are located in Brooklyn and over 28 percent in Queens.
So what is the city doing to keep those kids and teachers out of harm's way?
Read the full story here. ([link removed])
―Mariana Simões, climate reporter
Read more of Mariana's work ([link removed])
City Limits relies on reader support: Empower equitable change with your donation.
Donate today ([link removed])
Want more City Limits news delivered to your inbox?
Subscribe to newsletters ([link removed])
============================================================
Copyright © 2024, City Limits, All rights reserved.
Our mailing address is:
8 West 126th St., New York, NY 10027
You can ** update your preferences ([link removed])
or ** unsubscribe from this list ([link removed])
.
