[Dynamic music playing]

Angela Tovar: People don't

realize this but Hunts Point

is a vital piece of the

ecosystem of New York City.

[Dynamic music playing]

Angela Tovar : Most of the

produce, some of the fish,

and um some of the meat that

you probably consume everyday

has probably come through

Hunts Point first.

And then been taken and

distributed out to the grocery

stores.

Its where most of your food

comes from.

[Electronic music playing]

Angela Tovar : Hunts Point food

distribution center is one of

the largest in the world.

It's comprised of three

markets.

The meat market,

the produce market,

and the fish market.

And it actually generates 5

billion dollars of economic

activity for New York City.

A lot of food gets collected

here and re-distributed out to

grocery stores, to bodegas.

The produce market is on the

water and it's in a low-lying

area.

The fish market is on the

water as well.

So it's very vulnerable to

flooding.

Amy Chester : The markets hold

our food supply for three days

in New York City.

And they're in a floodplain.

So if anything happened to

those markets during a storm,

we would be really crippled in

our ability to get fresh food

out to the entire region.

[Music playing]

Avy Velazquez : I live

literally 5 minutes from here,

right by the water.

So if something happens I mean

like my house is right there

and my job.

Avy Velazquez: "Tito,

all of this got to come out of

the steaks.

No ink at all, no ink."

Ellen Neises There's 20

thousand direct jobs connected

with Hunts Point and those are

good jobs, those are,

you know, living wage jobs,

many of them union wage jobs.

If those are lost to a major

flood event that wipes out the

markets and then the markets

move,

it's catastrophic for families

in the Bronx.

Michael Mosner: The 35 years

that I've been here, uh,

I've seen a tremendous

economic boom in the Hunts

Point peninsula.

It's bringing in a lot of jobs

and if anything happens to

this area, you know,

catastrophic loss.

Avy Velazquez: We are

surrounded by water so I

believe the drainage system,

back here, sucks a little.

I mean when you get a little

bit of hard rain,

the streets are flooded.

A lot of supermarkets will

have no products because this

whole area will be flooded

out, so it's, this is vital,

this area needs to be taken

care of.

We depend on this.

Mitchell Slavin: This building

is built on piles.

If you go below this cement

slab floor, it is the marsh.

Michael Mosner: Inventory is

over,

almost always in excuse of a

million dollars.

In the event of another

catastrophic outage,

freezers defrost and the

meat's not wholesome,

we can't sell it.

People have to eat.

That's primary.

And if anything happens to

this area, you know,

doesn't matter what's going on

in Wall Street,

doesn't matter what's going on

in tech centers,

it all starts with being able

to feed people and take care

of their families.

Ellen Neises : So you know

Houston,

all of these events that are

happening, Puerto Rico,

are making us think about how

do we get out of this cycle

of, you know,

not really taking the steps

that we need to take,

it happens again,

maybe it happens in a

different place, and uh,

we saw with Sandy, you know,

it became very evident that

there's a short supply of

food.

If the markets go down,

the whole region's food supply

is at risk.

Amy Chester : So Rebuild by

Design started after Hurricane

Sandy,

it was an initiative of the

federal government and the

idea was to have a big

international competition to

connect the best minds of the

world to the best minds of our

region and really think about

how we can start planning for

the future knowing that we

have so many climate

uncertainties.

Ellen Neises: So the lifelines

that we developed are a flood

protection greenway,

number one,

that's sort of the first and

essential piece.

Ellen Neises: You know this is

a very compact greenway and we

try to fit in as much ecology

and water cleaning as

possible.

The perimeter right now here

is from 8-10 feet elevation,

so you can raise it to 16 feet

with a modest expense.

Ellen Neises : The second is to

think about how job creation

could be incorporated into all

of the strategies.

Some of it private job

creation in the markets,

some of it connected to the

maintenance and operation of

these ecological levees.

Angela Tovar : We,

with the Penn/Olin team,

developed the most

comprehensive solution that

this community has ever seen.

It not only addresses climate

change,

it calls for workforce

development,

it calls for local

procurement, it looks at,

resilient infrastructure.

It looks at energy, right,

renewable energy.

So for us that's such an

exciting road map to our

future.

Stephanie Baez: So the total

price tag for the entire

proposal was almost a billion

dollars and so that's not

something that the city in the

immediate term could afford

right now.

But the city has allocated 45

million dollars of federal

recovery funding for immediate

fixes here at Hunts Point.

Amy Chester: So they're

installing an energy microgrid

both for the market and for

two schools and a sewage

treatment plant.

It's really a demonstration

project to start thinking

about how we can make this

entire community more

resilient.

It won't take care of storm

surge or a rain event and the

problem that they still exist

in a floodplain,

but what it will do is it will

give backup power if they ever

need it.

Amy Chester : Look,

it's all choices.

Our government spends billions

and billions and billions of

dollars in infrastructure

every year.

We have to decide as a

community, as New Yorkers,

do we want to fortify a place

like Hunts Point,

do we want to build more

schools,

do we want to fix potholes,

whatever it may be - these are

all trade-offs.

And I'm thinking that if we

get another storm and it hits

Hunts Point,

that's gonna become a number

one priority.

Ellen Neises : If we can do one

of these brave common projects

- one project like this really

changes our frontier of what

is possible when we come

together