Downtown Express: In the days following Superstorm Sandy six years ago, Tanya Acevedo, a mother of two, remembers that it “felt like we were living in the end of the world.” 

While waiting for the power to return, her apartment in the Lillian Wald houses on Avenue D was dark and cold. 

“It felt so surreal,” she said. She recalled that her son, 3-years-old at the time, would cry from how cold it was in those late-October, early-November days after the storm hit New York — killing 43, knocking out power for two million, and causing $19 billion in damage in the city alone. Parts of Downtown were submerged under more than 10 feet of water. 

Today, Acevedo stocks extra blankets, nonperishable food, and batteries in her apartment in the case of another storm. 

But just east of her apartment building, at East River Park, the city’s major resiliency infrastructure project intended to protect her and 110,000 others in her neighborhood from storm surge and sea level rise has been long-delayed and recently overhauled entirely.  Continue reading>>