Residents Don’t Like The Smell Of Coney Island Creek Resiliency Study

Alex Ellefson -
Coney Island Resident Pete Castro (right) addressing Curtis Cravens, from the Mayor’s Office of Recovery and Resiliency. (Photo: Alex Ellefson / Sheepshead Bites)

Residents scorned some of the initial assessments presented on Thursday, August 6, for a flood barrier in Coney Island Creek, arguing the city was pushing a proposal that did more to boost tourism than address the waterway’s longstanding pollution problem.

“I really think this is a boondoggle of monumental importance,” said Ida Sanoff, a Brighton Beach resident and executive director of the Natural Resources Protective Association. “Every meeting I’ve gone to, they’re pushing one thing and one thing only. And that’s the eastern floodgate. Why? Because they can also put a bike path over it and more people can come into Coney.”

Representatives from several city agencies, including the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) and the Mayor’s Office of Recovery and Resiliency, came to the MCU Park Baseball Gallery to discuss their study on building a flood barrier in Coney Island Creek.

A spokesperson for NYCEDC said the goal of the study was to “to create a shared vision between the community, the City, and our State and Federal partners for how to protect the communities around Coney Island Creek from storm surge and sea-level rise.”

Throughout the meeting, presenters stressed the study was only halfway complete and none of the proposals were near ready to be finalized.

“We’re not at the stage right now where we have a specific concept to deliver to you,” said Elijah Hutchinson, NYCEDC’s assistant vice president for resiliency. “We’re here to talk about flood protection and to start to get your feedback and ideas as to how we can start to put together a plan.”

However, the presentation repeatedly identified the East Barrier proposal, which involves building a mechanical gate across a narrow section of the creek near West 22nd Street, as the most feasible option. The floodgate would remain open to allow water to flush out to sea and would only close during extreme weather. The land west of the barrier would be lined by walls built to withstand a so-called 100-year storm, the representatives explained.