Coney Island Hospital Gets A Bit Greener, More Resilient After Completing Energy Efficiency Project

Earlier this week we brought you the news that Coney Island Hospital will construct a new elevated tower structure for all critical services, keeping them out of reach of flood waters in a future storm. Now, the hospital – the only major medical facility in Southern Brooklyn – has announced the completion of a $21 million project to make existing buildings more resilient and energy efficient.

The project, done in conjunction with the New York Power Authority and National Grid, includes new, flood-ready boilers as well as modernized windows. The hospital and the power experts say that it will cut the amount of greenhouse gases emitted by the institution by more than 7,000 tons per year, as well as save taxpayers as much as $1.2 million annually on the public hospital’s heating bill.

The entire thing started as an energy efficiency project prior to Sandy to replace 80-year-old oil-based heating equipment. But the planners went back to the drawing board before forging ahead on the new, natural gas-based boilers to make it more storm-proof by elevating and waterproofing equipment.

The work is explained in the video below, which also features some of the hospital’s unheralded heroes from Superstorm Sandy – engineers, groundskeepers and others who made split second decisions on October 29, 2012, that ended up  reducing the damage done during the storm.