Healthier Natural Waterfronts Reflect Community Well-Being

Proposed wetland restoration for Middletown, CT. Rendering courtesy of Cooper Robertson.

Waterfront ecosystems serve many essential environmental functions and benefit people and communities. For example, wetlands can help filter pollution from stormwater runoff, improve water quality, reduce erosion, and provide habitat and food for diverse species. As climate change makes some regions wetter and warmer, wetlands can also help mitigate tidal and rain-based flooding. Many studies show that increasing public access to water bodies and healthy waterfront ecosystems can provide mental and physical health benefits, such as reduced stress and improved concentration and memory. However, there are many societal barriers limiting equitable access to healthy waterfronts, such as zoning, structural racism, and misconceptions about designing for flood risk mitigation. Here are a few ways urban planners can help drive more equitable access and protect and restore healthy waterfront ecosystems.

Waterfront Access for Community Well-Being

Public waterfront access directly correlates to public health and well-being, especially in urban areas, including decreasing climate risks. Recent case studies in Amsterdam and Barcelona revealed that climate resilience and promoting social equity were the most valued aspects of public water spaces (by those attending the public workshops hosted for the study). These benefits depend on public awareness of waterfront access and increase as more people utilize them. Similarly, as more people access the waterfront and recognize its value, there is potential for public programming aimed at ecological remediation and education efforts.

Waterfront Alliance's WEDG Standard for Resilient, Sustainable, and Accessible Waterfront Development

The Waterfront Alliance’s Waterfront Edge Design Guidelines (WEDG) certification provide guidance for equitable and environmentally friendly design along waterfronts, including public waterfront access and a unique category for natural resources. The goal for WEDG is to help reduce citywide flood and environmental risks, as well as drive economic value. It grants credit to redevelopment projects that plan to minimize impacts and improve biodiversity, with an emphasis on avoiding impacts to existing natural resources (i.e. preservation), as well as habitat restoration.

Community-Driven Solutions

Green engineering along the waterfront and public waterfront access are examples of mechanisms that foster the positive correlation between ecological health and communal well-being. This relationship is self-sustaining in that as an ecosystem grows and becomes more vibrant, it attracts engineering mechanisms and public efforts that will help it grow more so, thus attracting even more buy-in.

Especially in urban areas, waterfront access has not always been available to historically marginalized communities. Environmental racism negatively impacted community health and hampered preservation. Increased access to waterfronts is especially beneficial to marginalized communities through mitigating urban heat effects and flooding from extreme rainfall. It's important to make every effort to restore waterfront habitat, no matter how polluted the surrounding area is, because realistically, most urban waterfronts are highly contaminated.

Both the mechanisms of public waterfront access and green engineering should serve the natural and built ecosystems surrounding a site so ecological and human communities can flourish alongside each other. To this end, incorporating green engineering in waterfront designs should also lean on equitable community engagement. This approach is meant to ensure stakeholder input into a project’s vision, design, and implementation to create a welcoming and equitable waterfront for all.

Register for the Waterfront Conference on May 8 in New York City to learn more about equitable access at our waterfronts and creating a healthier environment.

Invest in Port Infrastructure to Invest in Our Economy

Port infrastructure in the New York Harbor. Photo by David Henry.

Ports—when you hear this word, what comes to mind? Our guess is you’re thinking ‘Ships?’ or maybe ‘Cranes that look like giraffe skeletons, but made industrial?’. You may not be thinking about how important ports are to keeping our economy running.

But ports and maritime infrastructure form the backbone of the U.S. economy, keeping the flow of goods moving to meet our everyday needs. The nation’s 328 coastal and inland ports support almost 31 million jobs and 26% of the GDP, according to 2018 statistics from the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). The pandemic highlighted just how much this infrastructure impacts our lives, as the delivery of everything from cars to bananas to clothes to medicine to food to computers was affected by supply chain strain at the ports.

In recent years, ports have adopted a new role as vital links in the emerging offshore wind industry. As more developers win offshore lease areas and move into staging and constructing wind farms, our outdated port infrastructure—and lack of available funding for capital upgrades—create major barriers to accommodating industry supply chains and project development. Most of the nation’s ports are at least a century old, and owners struggle to modernize existing infrastructure in order to keep pace with and accommodate today’s larger vessels. Decades of federal, state, and local disinvestment have likewise delayed repairs and maintenance, compounding the deterioration. Indeed, despite ports’ importance, a $12 billion funding gap existed (as of 2018) to fix waterside infrastructure over the next decade, with billions more needed for landside upgrades.

Ports will need to modernize to accommodate the larger vessels that transport major turbine components to offshore lease areas, as well as the larger cranes needed for component assembly and placement of ships. In short: crumbling wharf infrastructure will not only impede business as usual, but delay and hinder the offshore wind industry’s ability to deliver clean energy to millions.

In promising news, the Biden Administration’s 2021 passage of the Infrastructure and Jobs Act will invest $17 billion in port infrastructure. Additionally, the US Department of Transportation’s Maritime Administration released a funding opportunity in February 2023 that makes over $662 million of federal funding available for port infrastructure modernization.

While these injections of funding will be helpful, they are not enough. According to the ASCE’s 2021 Infrastructure Failure to Act Report, the projected gap between port infrastructure needs and available investment will reach more than $2.6 trillion by 2029 and more than $5.6 trillion by 2039. The report also states that an increased investment of $281 billion a year would eliminate the potential economic burden caused by port degradation, including job and GDP loss, which could exceed $10.3 trillion by 2039. This level of investment will be difficult to attain without additional interventions like state funding programs, incentivized private sector investment, and government prioritization of port infrastructure spending across federal, state, and local levels.

These ports and their accompanying maritime infrastructure have long been a staple of America’s economy. To leverage further opportunities for economic development with the advent of offshore wind in the US, ports need the appropriate federal funding to modernize and continue to grow our jobs and GDP.

Want to learn more about ports, offshore wind, and all things maritime?

The Karp Strategies team has a passion for and expertise about ports after our years of experience working on ports and with port authorities from New Jersey to Massachusetts to Maine. After her urban planning degree, CEO and Managing Principal Rebecca Karp worked at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (PANYNJ) both in policy and operational roles. Mike Deveney, our Data Compliance and Contract Administrator, joined Karp Strategies in 2021 after over thirty years of experience in operations, maintenance, security, and administration with PANYNJ.

We’ll be talking about exactly these issues and experiences at the Waterfront Alliance’s Waterfront Conference on May 8 in New York City! Join Rebecca, Maki Onodera (Jacobs), Stephen Famularo (WSP), and Patricia Gaynor (MARAD) as they speak on the panel, “Addressing Decades of Deterioration: Deferred Wharf and Pier Maintenance.” The discussion will explore how the public and private sectors must rise to the challenge of revitalizing our port infrastructure to support the regional economy.

Register for the Waterfront Conference below to attend this panel or others on waterfronts and climate resilience.

Register here:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/2023-waterfront-conference-the-implementation-challenge-tickets-506542741977