LEGISLATION TO PROTECT SHORELINES AND ENVIRONMENT FROM INCREASED CLIMATE CHANGE SIGNED INTO LAW

New York state Senator Shelley Mayer (SD-37) and Assemblyman Steve Otis (AD-91) recently held a press conference to announce the “Living Shorelines” legislation they sponsored has been signed into law by Governor Kathy Hochul. This legislation will require the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) to encourage the use of nature-based solutions as the preferred approach for stabilizing tidal shorelines in the oversight and regulatory decisions of the agency.
Communities across New York state face intensifying climate change related hazards, including dangerous floods. Hurricane Ida devastated communities and homes across New York, particularly those along the Sound Shore communities. Seventeen New Yorkers lost their lives and the storm caused $7.5 billion in damages, including damages to 11,000 homes and many roads. While less devastating, last week’s storm underscored our vulnerability. As storms become more frequent, intense and dangerous due to climate change, our communities become more vulnerable to these threats. Nature-based solutions or living shorelines, are shoreline management techniques that are supported or inspired by nature or natural processes and functions and are designed to mimic natural shorelines, improving the resilience of our shorelines and communities.
Living shorelines have a wide range of benefits, including: the reduction of flooding and erosion, improved water quality, providing greater stability against threats of storms, attracting wildlife and many more. The bill was inspired by the work of Save the Sound, Riverkeeper and The Nature Conservancy, three major advocacy organizations confronting the impacts of climate change on water bodies and inland areas.
“Governor Hochul’s signature of the Living Shorelines Act marks a major step forward for climate resilience in New York state, ensuring prioritization of permits for nature-based features such as native plants and oyster beds that provide habitat for wildlife as well as flood protections for communities – over projects that harden shorelines such as concrete seawalls and berms,” said Jeremy Cherson, Riverkeeper’s senior manager of government affairs.
“Increasing living shorelines is an important step toward making our communities more resilient to sea level rise and storm events, and will help to alleviate impacts of flooding. That’s why this legislation is necessary and timely and one of the priorities of the Long Island Sound Management Plan,” said Nancy Seligson, co-chair of the Citizens Advisory Committee of the National Estuary Program for Long Island Sound, the Long Island Sound Study.