Is NYC’s storm defense enough to protect Black and Brown communities?

A waterlogged street corner. An impassable block. A flooded basement. These seem more commonplace than in the past, happening each time New York gets a heavy rain. It comes at a cost, too. According to a 2025 report from State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli’s office, disasters linked to severe weather costing more than $1 billion have occurred increasingly since 1980.

That puts officials in the position of having to act proactively to prevent more harm from catastrophes like Hurricane Sandy, which caused more than $70 billion in damage.

“With the acceleration of the climate crisis, we are seeing the intensification of these kinds of events. Within the past month alone, we’ve seen our city deal with hazardous air quality, extreme heat, flooding. We also know that hurricane season is on the horizon,” said Mayor Zohran Mamdani at his roundtable for ethnic media on August 7, 2026. “We have been hard at work to prepare for this moment and all the moments that will come after this.”

However, longstanding underinvestment in Black and Brown neighborhoods across the city has left many residents vulnerable to flooding, especially if their homes have basements, because of heavy storms. Scientists also predict more chronic tidal and coastal flooding in the decades to come with rising sea levels in several places, such as Brooklyn, parts of Manhattan, and Queens.

“We are speaking about neighborhoods in our city that have either been last on the list, or not on the list at all,” said Mamdani. “I think the clearest way to show a recognition of that is to demonstrate a different course of action.”

EMBED: [New York City proceeds with flood protection project in Brooklyn’s Red Hook neighborhood]

With the consistent threat of flooding and rainfall reaching record levels due to the unprecedented heat in recent summers, New York City is sinking millions of dollars into improving the city’s stormwater infrastructure in an attempt to protect flood‑prone neighborhoods.

Mamdani recently allocated $43.2 million in the budget to expand the city’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) Bureau of Coastal Resilience. This includes hiring additional staff, engineers, field crews, city planners, and other flood experts to improve the city’s long-term coastal resilience plan. The city’s Emergency Management Department (NYCEM) has also worked to improve the flash flood warning system through Notify NYC, 311, and LinkNYC kiosks.

Spotlight on Queens

Queens Borough President Donovan J. Richards Jr. represents a borough that has, in many ways, borne the brunt of the city’s struggle to manage extreme flooding. “The Rockaways was hit very hard by Hurricane Sandy, but I also represent inland communities like Rosedale, Springfield Gardens, and Laurelton, where even on a day with the slightest hint of rain, their basements could be underwater,” he said.

Richards was the first Black councilmember to chair the Environmental Protection Committee during his time there from 2013 to 2020, when he noted the complete lack of infrastructure funding for southeast Queens under former Mayors Michael Bloomberg and Bill de Blasio. He said the extreme weather became a real crisis for homeowners in the area who couldn’t afford to repair the leaks and other damage, constantly leaving people in foreclosure.

“If it rains, you got to fix your basement, or your energy bills shoot up because you have to pump when it rains. These are people who are buying sump pumps by themselves,” said Richards. “The anxiety. The depression when storms are hitting some of these neighborhoods.”

Many New Yorkers reside in basement apartments of one- or two-family homes, and some have even lost their lives to deadly flooding and storm surges. The city pushed to legalize basement apartments under former Mayor Eric Adams’s City of Yes for Housing Opportunity plan in 2024. Mamdani said he’s staying the course with bringing these basement apartments up to code to address risks like fire and flooding.

NYCEM said it specifically has a messaging category aimed at warning people who live in basement apartments before storms and flooding and has done targeted signup campaigns for this group this year through social media and community events to help mitigate some of the stress caused by these emergencies. The DEP said it has conducted “regular flood preparedness town halls” in communities across the five boroughs with high flood risk. It has handed out free flood preparedness kits that include reusable flood barriers, a sump pump, a hose, and a flood alarm. Richards added that there’s been improvement in language access in terms of the messaging system as well.

“It’s really important that we all prepare,” said DEP Commissioner Lisa F. Garcia at the roundtable. She reiterated the importance of spray caps for fire hydrants to maintain water pressure for emergencies during heat waves and using a flood kit to protect a household.

Richards is “cautiously optimistic” about the progress since his days as a councilmember, calling the push for funding from the DEP now “tremendous.”

According to the DEP, there is currently a $2.7 billion push to build out storm sewers in southeast Queens. Rosedale, a majority Black community in Queens since the 1970s, was originally built on swampland and has always been prone to flooding, even though it’s somewhat inland. The city aims to pour about $51.8 million into the neighborhood to manage stormwater, improve tapwater distribution, and reconstruct streets, said DEP. Richards confirmed that construction is underway in Rosedale at the moment.

Mamdani’s office said it dedicated $108 million to modernize more than 6,700 catchbasins citywide to improve drainage and keep street litter out of the basins, and that work is starting in Queens this year. “I’m proud to say, in large part thanks to the incredible work of DEP, we have cleared over 7,100 catchbasins in the seven months that we’ve been in office,” said Mamdani.

“We still have some challenges,” said Richards. “We have a groundwater issue in places like St. Albans, where the water table is overwhelming and there’s no sewer that’s going to fix the issue because the groundwater is so high.” He added that “there’s been a substantial amount of growth around the borough and the city, and what they have to do is build out the sewer infrastructure. Some of these pipes haven’t been changed for nearly a hundred years. You’re going to have to widen the scope of those pipes to alleviate what I call nuisance flooding.”

There are nearly 440,000 New Yorkers, 14,500 businesses, and roughly $250 billion in property value within the city’s 100-year floodplain, said the mayor’s office.

Richards noted that he worries about storm surges in other areas, like Flushing, Forest Hills, and Rego Park, that traditionally haven’t been prone to flooding but are buckling with an increase in extreme weather overall.

“This is abnormal,” agreed Queens Assemblymember Khaleel Anderson. In his district, there are flooding and sewer issues in Rosedale, Arverne, Far Rockaway, Edgemere, and Hook Creek. “Don’t get wrapped up in the proximity to water — it’s not just near bodies of water. It’s Crown Heights. It’s South Ozone. Our sewer system has aged.”

Trump and climate change

It’s no secret that President Donald Trump has withdrawn billions in funding toward climate change initiatives, but this has had tremendous effects on the city’s local stormwater resilience projects as well. Mamdani said it’s necessary to be “realistic” about the federal administration’s focus and policies on climate, and “leave the door open in case there’s a change in approach.”

“To address climate, you have to address systemic racism and disinvestment in a lot of communities,” said Richards. “I’m not enthused with this federal administration rolling back a lot of policies. … They don’t believe in climate change and that has a long-term impact on our community. We had hundreds of millions of dollars revoked by the Trump administration for the borough in places like East Elmhurst, which is predominantly communities of color.”

Richards is still grateful that funding for many of the decades-long ongoing federal environmental studies hasn’t been halted. DEP confirmed that the newly expanded Bureau of Coastal Resilience is working closely with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on coastal flood protection plans on the Atlantic shorefront and Jamaica Bayside in Queens to protect against sea-level rise and storm surge.

Fighting the federal government for environmental funding has become the norm.

On the opposite side of the city, Esplanade Gardens in East Harlem in Manhattan, right near the East River waterfront on East 94th Street, has had electeds and advocates fighting for infrastructure improvements since Hurricane Sandy in 2012.

“I remember Hurricane Sandy and how that water came up, especially over by Esplanade Gardens. People lost property, cars. It was really a mess and you could see where the seawall was being breached,” said Harlem Senator Cordell Cleare. “I and some other folks have been asking for that money from the federal government and others to try and get that repaired before we have some real disastrous conditions.”

Cleare also expressed concern about rainfall and flooding on Harlem River Drive, and said she is determined to get the federal funding needed to get it fixed.

In the meantime, there are currently 15 active infrastructure projects under the city’s DEP office. This includes the $1.45 billion East Side Coastal Resiliency (ESCR) project, which would raise parkland, floodwalls, and 18 swinging or sliding flood gates on the Lower East Side. Several other major coastal flooding protection systems will also come online in the next four years, including Brooklyn Bridge-Montgomery Coastal Resilience, Seaport Coastal Resilience, and Red Hook Coastal Resiliency.

New York’s storm legislation

“We have to adjust to where we are now, climate change-wise,” said Cleare, who co-sponsors the Rain Ready New York Act (A7467A/S4071B) in the state senate. This bill would give water and sewer authorities oversight of stormwater management. It allows public authorities to adopt climate resiliency and water quality policies. Mamdani co-sponsored the Rain Ready Act while he was in the assembly.

Richards, who is also in full support of the Rain Ready Act, said that statewide, the focus needs to be on stormwater but also green infrastructure, like trees, green roofs, green spaces, and embankments, for storm resiliency.

“We need to look at holistic plans,” said Richards. “Your parks are like a sponge. They should be able to soak up a lot of the stormwater and groundwater to keep it from going into the catchbasin. That should minimize flooding in a lot of our communities.”

According to Caleb Smith, policy manager at WE ACT for Environmental Justice and a supporter of the city’s Five-borough climate adaptation plan under Local Law 122, “I think nature-based solutions help reduce the amount of water that is overwhelming our stormwater system. We need more funding for our green infrastructure program and eliminating any administrative barriers there may be, expanding funding for weatherization and things like roof repairs, so that in environmental justice communities, there’s more buildings and vegetation that are mitigating drainage. That’s an area that needs a lot more resources and attention.”