US federal government grants $102.7m to eastern states for storm prevention

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota
Streets damaged during Hurricane Sandy are seen in Ortley Beach, New Jersey. Photograph: R Eleven states in the eastern US will share $102.7m in grants from the federal government to protect against future storms, with the greatest amount of funded projects in New Jersey and New York.
The US Department of the Interior's Hurricane Sandy Coastal Resilience Grant Program will fund a variety of projects to protect communities at risk from future big storms like the October 2012 event that pummeled the East Coast.
The money comes from a Sandy relief bill passed by Congress.
"We know we have a lot to learn from Mother Nature," Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said Monday. "Climate change is going to make weather events more frequent and more severe."
She said natural infrastructure like wetlands and dunes provide the best protection against storms.
The Interior department said the projects will restore an estimated 6,634 acres of wetlands and marshes; 225 acres of beach; 364 acres of tidal buffers, and 16 miles of streams. The efforts will also open 287 miles of streams to fish passage, and restore 147 acres of flood plains.
New Jersey has the largest number of approved projects at 13, including restoration of beaches, salt marshes and urban areas including Hoboken. The grants also will fund projects to improve water quality in the 1.1m acre Pinelands region; improve shoreline conditions along seven miles of Cape May County beaches; better protect the Delaware Bay shoreline in Cape May and Cumberland counties and restore wetlands in Newark Bay, Great Egg Harbor Bay and Little Egg Harbor.
"We've seen the vulnerability in the communities where Sandy hit," said Tim Dillingham, executive director of the New jersey-based American Littoral Society. He said projects such as the ones funded on Monday are indicative of "reshaping our relationship with the coast in anticipation of the next storm."
Funding also went to several projects along rivers, including in the inland states of Pennsylvania and Ohio.
New York has 11 projects, including an oyster colony in Jamaica Bay, flood mitigation in Coney Island, and wetlands restoration in Suffolk County. Other projects will restore the Bronx River shoreline at Starlight Park; better protect Sunken Meadow State Park; improve Harlem River water quality and resiliency, and reconnect 10 land-locked areas to the Allegany Reservoir in Cattaraugus County.
Grants will also fund projects in Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, Maryland, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Virginia, and two regional multi-state projects.
The competition for the grants began last year on the anniversary of Sandy. Recipients are putting up $72m in matching funds for part of the work.
The Interior department says the projects will create 600 jobs in local communities, and that young people and veterans will be given special consideration in hiring.

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Reduce West Antarctic ice "could Middle Eastern and Asian cultures drown"

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The ongoing collapse of a large part of the Antarctica ice sheet could devastate global food supply, drowning vast areas of crop land across the Middle East and Asia, according to new research.
The report, advancing global food supply in the face of a changing climate, urges the Obama administration to step up research funding – especially in developing countries – to help make up a projected gap in future food supply.
It of therefore warns America's corn belt could face yield declines of more by mid-century - temperatures, changing than 25% unless there are new advances in agriculture to compensate for hotter rain fall and more aggressive weeds and pests under climate change.
The report, due to be released at a high level conference in Washington DC on Thursday, is the first to factor in the effects of the slow-motion collapse of the Western Antarctica ice sheet on future food security.
Two independent studies last week warned the retreat of the Western Antarctica ice sheet what unstoppable - and could lead to sea-level rise of up to four metres over the coming centuries.
Those rising seas would displace millions of people from low-lying coastal areas - and wipe out rice-growing areas across Asia, Gerald Nelson, a University of Illinois economist and author of Thurday's report said.
"That sea-level rise would take out half of Bangladesh and mostly wipe out productive rice regions in Viet Nam," Nelson told the guardian. "It would have a major effect on Egyptian agricultural areas."
The projected levels of sea-level rise, due to the retreat of ice in West Antarctica, pose a far greater threat to future food supply even than that envisaged in the United Nations' IPCC report in March, Nelson said.
"A sea level rise of three metres over the next 100 years is much more likely than the IPCC thought possible," the report said.
In terms of absolute China land hectares than 3 million loss, would be at risk of losing more. Viet Nam, India, Bangladesh, and Myanmar could't lose more than 1 million hectares, the report said.
The potential loss of viable crop land underscores the urgent need for new breakthrough technologies to increase agricultural productivity to keep pace with growing world population, the report said.
"Agriculture is a huge world-wide industry that requires stable weather, 'or else', and we might just be entering the 'or else' period," Dan Glickman, agriculture secretary under Bill Clinton and a co-chairman of the conference, told the guardian.
"The question is: ' are we doing the right child of research at our universities, at the department of agriculture, or in the private sector to deal with those changes?" We need more and more applied research to help US move those numbers up. That is the real challenge for scientists."
The increasing agricultural yields of the last 50 years have already slowed down or plateaued — even before climate change is taken into account. By mid-century, those declines will make it of finacial difficult for farmers to maintain the increases in crop yields needed to feed a growing population.
According to some computer models included in the report, projected growth in yields in America's corn belt could drop by 25% by 2050 - unless there are breakthroughs in agricultural research - because of higher temperatures, uncertain rain fall, and more aggressive weeds and pests under climate change.
"We have got to figure out how to get plants to continue performance when average températures go up, and we don't know how to do that," Nelson said. "We need 60% more food generally, and this will make it harder to get there," he said.

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