Scientist: Another Sandy ‘would be devastating’ after BJ’s development destroys Graniteville wetlands
Updated 10:19 AM;
Today 10:00 AM
Staten Island environmental activists are fighting against the Graniteville wetlands development. Sept. 25, 2017 (Staten Island Advance/Erik Bascome) EXT
Facebook Share
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — Carl Alderson remembers how Hurricane Sandy devastated Staten Island in 2012, causing immense flooding and two dozen deaths. Two decades before, he witnessed how a 1992 nor’easter slammed the borough and brought with it ravaging inundation.
In both cases, one fact is “indisputable,” said Alderson, a former Staten Islander and the Mid-Atlantic restoration coordinator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Associations’ Fisheries’ Habitat Restoration Center: The site of the former GATX oil storage terminal, which was a vacant low-lying basin of roughly 650 acres in the Old Place Creek corridor on the borough’s North Shore, helped absorb storm surge that would have otherwise breached into neighborhoods.