Why We Won’t Be Ready For the Next Superstorm

In today’s paper, the NY Times devoted most of its Metropolitan section to a storm warning. Called “New York’s Next Superstorm Is a Disaster Waiting to Happen,” the article detailed the catastrophe that the next Category 1 (and worse) hurricane could create. During 2022, the Army Corps of Engineers prepared a $52 billion plan that would mitigate the damage.

Why hasn’t anything been done?

Superstorm Planning

Detailing the potential damage, the NY Times looked back to Hurricane Sandy in 2012. As a cluster of islands, New York City’s worries include outdated sewer and subway systems and a long list of neighborhoods that flood easily from storm surges. Subject to as much as 10 or 11 feet of flooding, they included the highways that hug the city and the area around Yankee Stadium.

Given several alternatives from the Army Corps of Engineers, the experts said Plan 3B was the best for New York City:

This CNBC report presents a good summary of what could be done:

Our Bottom Line: Opportunity Cost

Because choosing is refusing, all decisions require a sacrificed alternative. When I eat pizza, the opportunity cost is the sandwich I did not order. Watching Landman, i sacrificed continuing The Diplomat during that evening.

Similarly, superstorm planning is all about opportunity cost.

Rewinding to 2005 and Hurricane Katrina in the U.S., we paid the cost of inadequate preparation. Then, the Army Corps of Engineers designed and installed levees that could not possibly withstand a Category 5 hurricane. At the time, the opportunity cost of the spending, design, and maintenance requisites were too high. For the federal government, Louisiana, and New Orleans, the opportunity cost of diverting funds from other destinations was too high. And indeed, because of the opportunity cost, their decisions might have made sense before the storm. But after, the fatalities and cleanup expense illustrated how wrong they were. The damage and death toll from Katrina far exceeded appropriate levee cost.

So far, New York City has decided preventive storm spending is not worth the money that would not be spent elsewhere. It makes sense until the storm hits.

My sources and more: This NY Times article inspired today’s post. (I am not sure why today’s article has a November date.)