I'm sure that abandoning hundreds of thousands of residences in the most densely populated area of the country would not cost the tax payers anything at all.

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If you did that, most of Hoboken would disappear (Hoboken was originally an island) and so would much of Jersey City and a good chunk of Manhattan.

How about not wasting tax payer money and returning the land back to nature!

Thanks for posting this -- I first heard about this article on WNYC
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Hoboken Mayor Seeks Storm Protection More Suitable for High-Rise Buildings




Streets in Hoboken, N.J., remained flooded on Oct. 31, two days after Hurricane Sandy struck.

New York Times
By KATE ZERNIKE
Published: February 12, 2013

HOBOKEN, N.J. ? Places long accustomed to the routine beatings of hurricanes have shaped this country?s traditional response to them: evacuate during the storm, then elevate the buildings or retreat inland to protect against the next onslaught.

But what works along vast expanses of shoreline is less suited to cities that are densely populated. Jolted into a new reality by Hurricane Sandy ? which hit not only communities of bungalows but urban areas stacked with high-rises ? experts said that coastal cities must figure out a new approach to hurricane preparation and recovery.

The mayor of this city of 50,000 across the Hudson River from New York, badly damaged by the storm, is pushing federal and state officials to make it a test case for a new model of hurricane resilience, one that could be translated to other cities in the Northeast that rising seas have increasingly turned into flood plains.

Most bluntly, Mayor Dawn Zimmer said, that means accepting and planning for the likelihood that most residents will not evacuate, even under an official order. And it requires adjusting federal flood-insurance guidelines to recognize that it is not possible to elevate an entire city. About two-thirds of Hoboken lies in the flood zone on new federal maps, but apart from the rare single-family homes, most buildings are apartment complexes or attached houses that cannot easily be mounted on pilings.

?The rules don?t work,? Mayor Zimmer said. ?They?re looking at a fairly suburban approach. We need to carve out an urban approach. Because today it?s Hoboken, tomorrow, Boston.?

Under Ms. Zimmer?s proposal, federal disaster agencies would not give money to homeowners to have their houses lifted. Instead, the money would go to the city to pay for what she calls a universal solution: building permanent walls to the north and south of the city, where the hurricane sent surges that, as she said after the storm, ?filled the city like a bathtub.? The city is also proposing a removable wall installed along the Hudson waterfront and floodgates in the city.

In the event that a storm overwhelms power substations, Hoboken also wants to be able to disconnect from the electrical grid ? something utility companies have traditionally opposed ? and transfer to its own mini-grid, which would rely on a mix of energy sources ? diesel, solar, wind and natural gas. Among other things, that would power a system of lights in windows that residents who remain in their apartments could use to signal distress.

And rather than offer to transfer development rights horizontally ? that is, to buy out homeowners in the flood plain and move them farther inland ? Hoboken is considering transferring people vertically, moving them out of basements and ground-level apartments. Lower floors might be left vacant, or used for parking garages.

The mayor?s plans, which she was scheduled to unveil officially in her State of the City speech on Wednesday evening and which would require the support of various federal and state agencies, were shaped by the devastation of Hurricane Sandy.

Officials estimate that less than half of Hoboken residents evacuated before the storm. The city, without cellphone or landline communication or electricity, relied on volunteers to ferry pots of water to high-rise buildings, and bring prescriptions to elderly people too afraid to venture through dark hallways. Those experiences were replicated in high-rises in parts of New York and Atlantic City.

As the water lingered for days, the mayor drove around with the National Guard, trying to identify people who were stranded in buildings and needed help. Residents and businesses are still cleaning out ?garden style? basement units that were overwhelmed by water.

Experts said the problems would only increase for cities in the Northeast as sea levels rise. ?Even a traditional nor?easter is going to cause some flooding, and when we get bigger storms, there?s going to be that much more damage,? said William Solecki, director of the City University of New York?s Institute for Sustainable Cities at Hunter College. ?What to do with cities as they transform to a higher risk than they previously imagined is an emerging challenge that people have to reconcile.?

Ms. Zimmer has discussed her proposals with representatives of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the National Flood Insurance Program and is hoping that both can provide money from their hazard-mitigation program. She is also applying for grants from the state, which will parcel out the recovery money that Congress approved last month.

Experts said the key element was a wide variety of solutions and redundancies. Hurricane Katrina, for example, showed that a reliance on ?hard? solutions alone, like levees, can fail.

?If you?re going to put together this kind of integrated approach, you need to think about a whole range of events that could happen, and think about how you might end up with the fewest regrets,? said Armando Carbonell, chairman of the department of planning and urban form at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy in Cambridge, Mass. ?It?s very tricky and very new, and it?s getting away from a single engineering criteria that says just build it 10 feet higher and you?re absolutely safe.?

Ms. Zimmer?s plan also includes installing microgenerators ? off the ground, and powered by the city?s own grid ? at grocery stores, hospitals, police and fire stations and senior and public housing.

The plan would also include ?green? components, like planting green roofs to absorb rainwater, which floods the city even in routine storms. Rutgers University has already developed a plan to put porous pavers and ?rain gardens? on city streets.

The mayor is also seeking money to buy two old industrial plots and a parking lot to install tanks to catch water in the southwestern end of the city, which suffered the worst flooding of the storm, despite being landlocked. Additional pumps would back up an existing one that was flushing out 75 million gallons of water a day after the storm.

?It?s very hard to change cities that have been developed for a certain way for 100-plus years,? said Adam Zellner, who works with Greener by Design, a New Jersey firm working with Hoboken and recovery agencies. If it works, he said, ?It?s a great demonstration because if you look at cities between Philadelphia and Boston, a lot of them have development patterns that are very similar.?

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/13/nyr ... -for-high-rises.html?_r=0

Still haven't heard Healy mention anything about how JC is addressing the changing FEMA flood elevations or any plans to prepare itself for the next big storm.