Russell Shorto profiles Henk Ovink in the New York Times Magazine: “How to Think Like the Dutch in a Post-Sandy World.”
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A Dutch water-management expert and adviser to America
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He had recently taken an exploratory trip to the Far Rockaways, with a team of American engineers that was rebuilding storm walls damaged by Sandy. “These are the same walls that broke before?” Ovink asked. “Yes!” came the reply. “And what if they break again?” “We’ll rebuild them again.”
Beyond that, Ovink feared that politics might undermine any chance to encourage new thinking about water management. “When I mentioned climate change to one official,” he said, “she almost hit me.” He characterized some of the wishful thinking he believed he would be dealing with as: “Don’t hire a Dutchman — believe in angels.” …
To Ovink’s amazement, virtually all relevant parties in the Northeast have grown receptive to what he has to say, with nary a word about angels. “It’s weird!” he said with evident satisfaction.
Last summer, the Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force issued its report of recommendations for long-term change in the U.S., and it was filled with Ovink-like ideas. Among the recommendations: The Northeast has to work more to utilize existing ecosystems, like dunes and undersea barriers. Artificial storm-surge barriers need to be created in some places, but only as part of the larger regional picture (for example, if a barrier had gone up near the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge between Staten Island and Brooklyn during Sandy, it could have actually increased flooding in Manhattan).
The recommendations also include things like revamping wastewater treatment, making the electrical grid less vulnerable and designing new affordable housing. Small details — like programming elevators not to go to the basement if there is flooding — are given attention. And water containment has to be layered into the urban landscape. Dutch cities now build huge reservoirs under new parking garages. “Every time you rebuild,” Ovink said, “you have to think about water.” …
Others, including some of Ovink’s biggest fans, caution that significant cultural change still has to occur before his vision takes root here. “It’s a long shot,” Eric Klinenberg, director of the Institute for Public Knowledge at New York University, said. “The only reason to think it will work is that we know if it fails, we’re essentially doomed.”
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Indeed much sustainability thinking could be learned from the Europeans who have lived and survived in lands for 2000+ years, not just water but also apprenticeship based education & training systems, less car reliance, road pricing, denser cities, biking or how to fund public transit. But no, we have to reinvent everything again here first, then fail, then build properly.
Richmond, for example, could build huge agricultural, commercial and residential land west into the shallow parts of the ocean as the Fraser a River pushes sediments there annually buy the tons. Why not dyke it, and use it, for example ?