“A Twenty-First-Century Catastrophe” - The Ripple Effect: The Fate of Freshwater in the Twenty-First Century - page 181

ter levels, scientists estimate, will increase the frequency of a hundred-year storm event
to once every ten years.
In certain regions, the federal government requires people to buy policies from its
National Flood Insurance Program in order to get a mortgage. Most private insurers
don't offer insurance in floodprone areas because the damage from high waters is ex-
pensive to clean up. But the government's insurance program keeps premiums artifi-
cially low (to make them affordable) and often relies on outdated flood maps (because
updating them is expensive and is not a priority), which, perversely, encourages build-
ing in risky areas.
In 2006, a year after Katrina, only 20 percent of American homes at risk of flooding
were properly insured. Despite years of brave talk about fixing the insurance program,
Congress has failed to do so. When major floods occur, federal agencies and the Na-
tional Guard provide substantial aid—meaning that taxpayers ultimately end up shoul-
dering the homeowners' risks of building in flood zones.
“WE CAN'T SAY WE HAVEN'T BEEN WARNED”
One place that experts agree has a high probability of being hit by a severe hurricane
in coming years is the Northeast, including New York City . By 2050, climatologists es-
timate, the city is likely to experience a three-to-five-degree rise in temperature and a 5
percent increase in rain and snow. As the climate warms, ocean waters will expand and
cause the seawater around the city to rise about ten inches by 2050 and two feet by 2080,
according to a study by Columbia University. When stirred by a hurricane, high waters
could swamp the city.
According to a NASA climate study, if a Category 3 hurricane, like Katrina, were to
hit New York, it could create a storm surge of up to twenty-ive feet high at Kennedy
Airport , twenty-four feet at the Battery, twenty-one feet at the entrance to the Lincoln
Tunnel, and sixteen feet at La Guardia Airport. Such a deluge would destroy billions of
dollars' worth of property and could shut the city down. While the sandhogs and pencils
at the city's Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) are racing to finish Tunnel
No. 3 to avoid the city's running dry, other experts at the agency are concerned about
the opposite problem: the prospect of Manhattan turning into a modern Atlantis.
In 2006, Max Mayield , then director of the National Hurricane Center, told Con-
gress, “It is not a question of if a major hurricane will strike the New York area, but
when.” That same year, just a few months after Hurricane Katrina, an insurance-in-
dustry assessment ranked New York City as “the second worst place for a hurricane to
hit,” after Miami. Another survey that year found that New York residents had taken