Artificial islands off the coast of New York and New Jersey could help protect the regions from storm damage such as what occurred in the wake of Hurricane Sandy.
The proposed islands would cost between $10 billion and $12 billion, the Associated Press reported.
"We've discussed this with the governor's office of Recovery and Resiliency and the Department of Environmental Protection, and they all look at me like, 'Whoa! This is a big deal!" Alan Blumberg, a professor at New Jersey's Stevens Institute of Technology told the Associated Press. "Yes, it is a big deal. It can save lives and protect property."
The proposal is one among nine others that will be voted on by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in coming weeks.
"How do you protect New Jersey and New York at the same time from the storm of the future?" Blumberg said "Our idea is to build a chain of islands, like a long slender banana. The wave action and storm surge will reflect off these islands and go back out to sea rather than hitting the coast. Barnegat Bay would not be pounded, nor would lower Manhattan or Hoboken."
The islands would be placed at a distance that still allowed water from the Hudson River to rush through into the ocean. They would be built by piling sand atop an artificial base made from a hard material such as concrete.
The proposal had been met with some opposition.
"The sand borrow sites always run into strong objections from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service: 'Something MIGHT live there,'" Stewart Farrell, head of Stockton College's Coastal Research Center told the AP. "Next in line would be the historical preservationists: You can't cover up Captain Kidd's treasure ships, no way! And every 19th-century coal barge is an historical treasure. Then there are abundant submarine cables, lines, pipes and rights of way."
Surfers are also concerned about how the islands will affect the Jersey Shore culture.
"This would forever change the Jersey shore," John Weber of the Surfrider Foundation told the AP. "Bayfronts are very different from oceanfronts, and this would change oceanfronts into bayfronts. People that spent all that money to live on the ocean would be facing something very different. And this does nothing to address rising sea levels; we'll still have homes that will still get flooded due to rising sea levels."
