Perched on a stool next to a large window at the downtown Starbucks in Hoboken, Dutch water expert Henk Ovink turns his intense gaze to the sidewalk outside. “Look at the pavement,” he says. “Do you see any capacity to hold water?”
Ovink is possibly the Netherlands’ most valued export at the moment. With rising sea levels and booming waterfront development occurring all over the world, his expertise in urban planning in a country built on a river delta is in high demand. Luckily for Hoboken, once an island surrounded by marsh but now filled in and urbanized, Ovink is currently working with the federal government to help the entire New York metropolitan area rethink how to live close to the water. As for Hoboken’s sidewalks, they in fact have no capacity to hold water. The problem is emblematic of the city’s larger water issues, which came to a head during the infamous Hurricane Sandy.
Days before Halloween in 2012, Hoboken officials, residents, and business owners were preparing for a tropical storm gaining strength and speed northbound on the Atlantic Ocean. After making landfall near Atlantic City on Oct. 29, Hurricane Sandy whipped into Hoboken late that Monday night with an unprecedented combination of severe rainfall and a storm surge that brought the Hudson River into most of the Mile Square. Sandbags that lined doorways and tape that stretched across windows—not to mention spray-painted signs warning Sandy to stay away—were in vain. The water, as Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer said at a press conference after the storm, “filled the city like a bathtub.” The damage was estimated at more than $100 million.
Hoboken’s devastation got the media spotlight. Security-camera footage of water gushing into the PATH station through elevator doors and other crevices seemed to be on repeat. Images of damaged homes and businesses, parking lots full of flooded vehicles, sewage and debris floating in the street, and the National Guard helping out also saturated the news.
Still in the Netherlands, Ovink watched on TV as President Obama and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie toured the Jersey shore. Ovink also saw the images of Hudson County and New York and wasn’t sure why he felt compelled to start a collection of them on his iPad. “I never knew I was going to use them,” he says. But he did, months later, in a presentation he gave in his current position as senior advisor to U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Shaun Donovan, whom Obama had put in charge of the Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force. The task force was created about a month after the storm to make sure help was sent where it was needed. Donovan might have been the authority on housing with experience in disaster recovery, but when he became head of the task force, says Ovink, “he didn’t know shit about water.”
But the Dutch do.
A Water-Logged Nation
Much of the Netherlands used to be covered with water. “We took out the water and created land,” says Ovink, bringing up on his iPad an old map of his home country. Indeed, a good portion of it is dark blue. With the North Sea as their western border and several major rivers running through their country, the Dutch have used dams, dikes, levees and pumps to manage the water. “If it didn’t work, we would all have to move to Germany,” says Ovink. Two thirds of the Netherlands is below sea level; the other third, at sea level.
Like Hoboken, the Netherlands had swamps that were filled in. Most of the country is prone to flooding, and the Dutch also have to deal with hurricanes and storm surges. In fact, on the anniversary of Sandy, the country braced for a similar system, although it was not nearly as powerful. The Netherlands’ “Sandy,” says Ovink, happened in 1953. Nearly 2,000 people were killed.
For the Dutch, needing aid after a storm is not the norm. “The Dutch are very much involved in helping out when a disaster happens, anywhere in the world,” says Ovink. In fact, after Hurricane Katrina, the Dutch were in New Orleans. “We were immediately on the ground,” says Ovink. More recently, the Netherlands responded to severe flooding occurring in the United Kingdom last winter. “We have such a strong community when it comes to water safety—our engineers, our designers, our scientists and our government. Even our democracy was built on water.” In the 1200s, the Dutch water boards, responsible for how water would be managed in a particular region, were the first form of elected local government.
Aqua Man
Ovink, 46 years old with a closely shaved head and light blue eyes, didn’t plan on becoming the Netherlands’ expert on water. But he and the natural element, he says, met halfway. Coming from a long line of architects, Ovink studied mathematics and art in college. After graduation, he established his own urban planning and design firm. “I started from a design and planning perspective,” Ovink says, “and discovered that the Netherlands’ planning and design is all about water. I found the water through the work, but the water also found me because it was so apparent in the work we were doing.” His business eventually merged with an architecture firm; Ovink left after 14 years to work as a director for spatial planning and housing on the state level. He was later recruited to work for the Netherlands’ national government and served as the acting director general for spatial planning and water affairs before moving to the U.S.
Ovink met Donovan while the secretary was on vacation in Europe. Donovan had decided to detour to the Netherlands to meet with Ovink and talk water. Not long after the two officials toured the once-waterlogged country, Ovink sent Donovan an email and offered his services. “Sandy could be a game-changer for the U.S.,” he wrote. Donovan’s response was immediate and positive; suddenly, Ovink had a new job.
Ovink is fascinated that people all over the planet will have to face serious water issues in the future but really have no concept of what that will mean. “Amongst people and leadership across the world, there is a total lack of understanding what the urgency and the complexity of the water issue is,” says Ovink. Many factors—climate change, urbanization, economic development—will make water a different problem in every region, but that’s no reason to shy away from trying to come up with a solution. “My mission in life,” says Ovink, “is to convince politicians and people that embracing complexity is a way out and a necessity to deal with these issues.”
Changing Hearts and Minds
One hurdle is cultural. Some people do not want to accept that climate change is real, says Ovink, but it is the biggest reason that dealing with the water issue now is so important. It not only means the sea level will rise but there will be stronger storms yielding more water in the way of surges and rainfall. It will also mean longer periods of drought, which can stress a city’s water system just as much as a flood. But if people do not see climate change for themselves, says Ovink, it can be very difficult to convince them. For example, he says, last year, the North Pole had a warm winter, while the U.S. seemed to experience polar vortex after polar vortex. “In the perspective of people,” says Ovink, “if you have a very cold winter yourself, you say, ‘global warming?’” But those sorts of extremes are in fact indicators of global warming.
Making the water issue even more urgent is urbanization. “The world is urbanizing,” says Ovink. More and more people are moving to cities and most of those cities, all over the world, are near or on the waterfront. “It means that there is a dependency on what the water does,” says Ovink. Having too much or too little water can also affect the quality of the water running through the pipes of homes and businesses, which can have health and economic consequences. “Water is not one-dimensional,” says Ovink. “It has all these dimensions.”
Comprehensive and Complex
Immediately after Hurricane Sandy, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) updated its flood zone maps, but Ovink says this was not a solution. “They are insurance maps,” he says, “not planning maps.” The solution to the water issue will require planning for what the future will hold. People from the federal government to the local resident need to look at what might happen in the next, possibly much stronger storm. “We have to look forward,” says Ovink, “and see this is the future, with all of these unpredictable things that might happen, economic things, ecological things, demographic things. How will we prepare our region in this case?”
The solution will also require collaboration across towns and states. “Regionalism in the United States is very complex,” says Ovink. “It’s crossing jurisdictions. Hoboken and Jersey City, find a common ground. Tough. Everybody takes care of themselves.” But Hurricane Sandy, says Ovink, made no distinction between New York and New Jersey, Republican and Democrat, but proved that everyone is in the same situation. “You have to work together to find a solution that actually builds a better region instead of building one place safe and the other place even less safe,” says Ovink.
There is no quick fix, he says. The solution needs to be comprehensive and thus complex. After arriving in New York and settling into his new position, Ovink says that during his first media interview a reporter asked him if he was going to help build a storm surge barrier. “People want simple solutions for complex questions,” he says. “You won’t get simple solutions from me. You will get complex solutions, which are far better.”
Ovink encountered a similar mentality during one of the workshops for the task force. Someone pinpointed power grids as the problem. “I said we don’t actually know what the problem really is,” says Ovink. “We first have to do research. We have to gather talent, interdisciplinary talent—scientists, engineers, designers, politicians, economists—and connect them with the talent of the region, the people who experienced Sandy but also the researchers and the mayors and the community groups to work together for a couple of months to find out what are the real vulnerabilities in light of climate change and future uncertainties.”
Rebuild by Design
That notion sparked the idea for the Rebuild by Design competition, launched in June 2013, to come up with a solution that would work for the entire New York metropolitan area. Why a competition? “It attracts talent,” says Ovink. “You can create a lot of tension in such a process.” From an international pool of about 150 teams that applied, 10 groups were selected to tour the region and conduct research. That research, says Ovink, revealed some surprising facts, like 80 percent of the fuel stored in the Sandy-affected region is in a flood zone; the other 20 percent, just adjacent to the flood zone. The teams, which included various professionals, were asked to submit three to five preliminary plans for different areas of the region—Hoboken, the Meadowlands, Staten Island, the Lower East Side, and others.
The teams presented their plans in April 2014. The winning plan for Hoboken and parts of Jersey City and Weehawken came from OMA, a Dutch architecture firm with offices in New York. (Ovink had no previous connection to OMA.) OMA worked in collaboration with water experts and engineers from the Dutch company Royal HaskoningDHV, landscape and land use planners from New York-based Balmori Associates and economists from HR&A Advisors, also in New York. The interdisciplinary team consulted with the state and local governments, business owners, community groups and residents to refine its plan. In Hoboken, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and New Jersey Transit were part of the talks.
Ovink and the rest of the task force provided guidance and support. “What we found in Hoboken,” says Ovink, “was a lot of risk, a lot of problems all tied together.” Hoboken is home to many vulnerable assets, including the PATH station, water treatment plant, and hospital. But that doesn’t mean a solution is impossible. “This is urban,” says Ovink. “This is condensed. You can take care of it comprehensively.” OMA’s plan does just that. “What is appealing and good about the strategy OMA put in place is that it looks at the full picture and then comes up with a very implementable strategy,” says Ovink.
OMA’s plan is called Resist, Delay, Store, Discharge. “Resist is about stopping the storm surge,” says Daniel Pittman, a business manager at OMA who served as the team leader. “The other three are about managing rainwater.” The plan looks at Hoboken as a whole. “Rather than protecting one building at a time, we were looking at the entire city,” says Pittman. “That is unique certainly within the U.S.” He adds that FEMA has guidelines for coastal cities that encourage individual property owners to put their homes on stilts, but that would not work for Hoboken. “Being able to create the solution that is appropriate for an urban environment was the goal.” The plan not only creates ways to manage water in times of disaster but also looks at what could be done to accommodate future growth in Hoboken. Other benefits could be more reasonable flood insurance premiums, if FEMA agreed to redraw its maps, and some amenities that serve as both recreational areas as well as flood protection.
The “resist” part of the plan includes hard infrastructure and soft landscape. At Weehawken Cove, a new park on the coast could include a levee that would provide a defense against a storm surge for Hoboken, Weehawken, the water treatment plant, and an electrical substation. Also at the north end of town, OMA’s plan calls for a manmade wetland that would serve as a barrier and also a natural filtration system in case Hoboken’s combined sewage system overflows onto the street level, like it did during Hurricane Sandy. But building the wetland correctly takes study and time, says Pittman. “All of that needs to be managed over time, making sure the right conditions are set up,” he says.
Absorbing Water
Hoboken’s combined sewage system processes both sewage and rainwater. During Hurricane Sandy, the sheer volume of rainwater and storm surge overwhelmed the system and forced sewage to the streets. Replacing Hoboken’s existing system with a separated system would be “prohibitively expensive,” says Pittman, but the city is working with the North Hudson Sewerage Authority on a plan to require new development in the 30-acre rehabilitation area at the north end of town to have a separated system. As for the rest of Hoboken, Pittman says the other measures in OMA’s plan should prevent the city’s existing system from being overwhelmed like it was during Sandy.
Green spaces, like parks and rooftop gardens, are a big part of OMA’s “delay” strategy. Instead of rushing into Hoboken’s sewage system, rainwater could be absorbed by plants and earth. Hobokenites could start to see greenery popping up on the tops of public and private buildings and even the few mini malls in town. The city already purchased land and received a federal grant for green infrastructure for a new park near Seventh and Jackson streets that will be able to hold 200,000 gallons of rainwater.
In recent years, the Dutch, too, have had to get more innovative. They’ve been developing “water squares,” essentially parks that are lower than street level and serve as basketball courts or recreational areas in dry times but fill up like swimming pools during heavy storms.
“We are not fighting it,” says Ovink. “We are living with it. That’s exactly the different perspective.”
OMA also proposed bioswales, roadside ditches with plants, alongside Washington Street and potentially other avenues. “Greenery prevents flash floods,” says Pittman. “Over time, this will create essentially a second layer of drainage for the city, so the rainwater will be managed at the surface.”
The city is also considering the idea of expanding Pier A Park toward Lackawanna Plaza to help protect the PATH station by adding absorption in an area known to collect water during heavy rainstorms. “There are different strategies that we will be looking at,” Zimmer says, adding that in the meantime, the Port Authority has already taken several measures to shore up the station.
Community on Board
While speaking to local residents, Pittman says his team discovered that Hobokenites were very excited about the green spaces and even talked about creating some of their own. “The plan isn’t always about designing a solution but creating a framework so people could do things in their own capacity,” says Pittman. Something as simple as a garden of potted plants on someone’s balcony could contribute to the overall effort to absorb water. “All these smaller efforts add up,” he says. Even Hoboken’s sidewalk could be part of the delay strategy, if it were replaced by permeable material that would allow rainwater to seep into the ground below.
OMA’s plan also includes water storage. The city has been in negotiations to purchase a six-acre property in the northwestern part of town to create a very large water storage facility that could potentially provide parking in dry times. A park or recreational area could be built on top. Zimmer says there are also plans to install a 13,000-gallon cistern behind City Hall. In addition, OMA proposed a greenbelt along the route of the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail, which is owned and operated by New Jersey Transit. OMA’s plan would add storage for rainwater underneath the track. “It not only provides that route of storage, but anywhere, you can build out that space for more storage,” says Pittman.
The Light Rail could also serve as a route for drainage, part of OMA’s “discharge” strategy. Another piece is a water pump at 11th Street and Frank Sinatra Drive, a project the city has been working on. That would be in addition to the pump on the south end of town. “One strategy on its own is not going to solve the problem,” says Pittman, “but if you have multiple strategies in place, it will manage the flooding.”
Part of the final proposal Pittman’s team submitted was a cost-benefit analysis, which the department of housing and urban development used to assess how much each project would get. The Hoboken project, which includes parts of Weehawken and Jersey City, has been allotted $230 million through a Community Development Block Grant for disaster recovery for the first phase. In the future, additional funding could come from other public resources as well as private investors.
Rebuild by Design, as an initiative, has challenged the way the federal government distributes aid. In the past, Hoboken was able to secure funds to protect, say, one or two fire stations, but it was not possible to get help implementing a citywide strategy. “This design competition has enabled the federal government to completely step out of the box,” says Zimmer, who shepherded OMA and the entire process in Hoboken. Protecting the entire city, instead of protecting one building at a time or having to constantly rebuild, will mean savings for Hoboken in the future.
Making it Happen
The next step is implementation, and Ovink says local governments can begin immediately. “They can start changing some of the regulatory things that need to change,” he says. Hoboken has done it. The city council already passed two new ordinances considering climate change. One prohibits any more residential or commercial construction on Hoboken’s piers. The other is meant to reduce flood insurance rates by requiring new developments to have their utilities and elevator mechanicals above basement level. New regulations also prohibit any new garden-level residential units; however, businesses will still be allowed on the street level. Zimmer says Hoboken now has to focus on revising the master plan before the city can make sweeping changes. “We are ready,” says Zimmer. “We want to move ahead.”
Ovink says the Hoboken plan will take time. “Because the plan has so many aspects, implementation is not, ‘Let’s build this big thing and then we’re done,’” says Ovink. “No. You have to build a lot of things.” He adds that a lot of that building can begin immediately. For example, when a portion of the sidewalk is being fixed, the city might consider creating a bioswale at the same time. Working on the plan little by little is a good strategy, says Ovink, because then people will see the change and talk about it and begin to realize that the future really requires rethinking living near water. “This is about cultural change,” says Ovink. “This is about acknowledging that the world will be different tomorrow. If we start today, small and big, we will learn how to live with that tomorrow in a different way.”
With all the various projects incorporated into the Hoboken plan, Ovink says the Mile Square could be a model for other cities and regions. In fact, based on the success of Rebuild by Design, Ovink and other members of the task force were asked to help draft the National Disaster Resilience Competition, unveiled in June 2014 to promote innovative resilience projects across the country.
“If you embrace water as a friend, you can live with it,” Ovink says. “If it becomes your enemy, you better get out because it is always stronger.”—07030
PHOTOS BY Alyssa Bredin