NYC Expands Bureau of Coastal Resilience
To Protect Boroughs from Flooding
NEW YORK – New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Lisa F. Garcia announced recently a dramatic expansion of the Bureau of Coastal Resilience to better protect communities against rising sea levels and the growing threat of stronger, more severe coastal storms worsened by climate change.
The mayor has invested $43.2 million across the city’s financial plan, including $10.6 million in the current fiscal year, to hire 69 additional staff members to the bureau, including engineers, field crews, city planners and other flood experts. The funding also supports several major studies that will strengthen the city’s long-term coastal resilience strategy, including a roadmap for protecting all 520 miles of New York City’s coastline.
The bureau centralizes the planning, operation and maintenance of the city’s growing network of coastal flood-protection infrastructure, and for years, has relied on a team of six staff and the support of borrowed crew members from across DEP. The city is now investing in a Bureau of Coastal Resilience that has the expertise and manpower necessary to meet the moment and protect its coastal communities for generations to come, city officials noted.
There are currently 15 active infrastructure projects in the bureau’s portfolio, including the city’s first major coastal flood protection system: the $1.45-billion East Side Coastal Resiliency project, which features raised parkland, floodwalls and 18 swinging or sliding flood gates to create a continuous line of protection. ESCR will come online next year and protect more than 110,000 New Yorkers, including approximately 28,000 public residents, on the Lower East Side from storms like Hurricane Sandy.
In addition to ESCR, several other major coastal flooding protection systems will come online in the next four years, including Brooklyn Bridge-Montgomery Coastal Resilience, Seaport Coastal Resilience, and Red Hook Coastal Resiliency. The administration has invested $108 million to upgrade and replace thousands of catch basins to improve the city’s street drainage network, $95 million to protect the flood-prone neighborhood of Homecrest in Brooklyn from cloudbursts and completed phase one of Battery Coastal Resilience, a landmark $200-million investment in the long-term safety and resilience of Lower Manhattan.
“As climate change accelerates, so too must our efforts to protect our communities from flooding and extreme weather,” said Mayor Mamdani. “This investment ensures the bureau can keep pace with the billions of dollars in flood prevention and mitigation infrastructure being built and mobilized in the next few years. Staffed with engineers, flood-risk management experts and maintenance crews, the Bureau of Coastal Resilience will drive resiliency job opportunities while making sure our city is prepared for whatever comes our way.”
Published: July 29, 2026.