Building critical resources for a diverse and at-risk community.
Newark, New Jersey: $10.58 Million
This is a Justice40 project.
History
Newark is a diverse population center that lies just west of Downtown Manhattan and Jersey City. It’s an important transportation industry and transportation hub due to its train stations, port, and airport. Ironbound itself is a large, working-class, multi-ethnic community. FEMA has issued disaster or emergency declarations for Essex County for 43 flood-related disasters from 1954 to 2019 for disasters classified as one or a combination of the following disaster types: hurricane, tropical storm, Nor’easter, snowstorm, severe storms, flooding, inland and coastal flooding, coastal storm, high tides, heavy rain, and severe storms.
Project Description
Newark’s Ironbound neighborhood is subject to repetitive flooding which is exacerbated by its combined sewer system and an overabundance of impervious surface. Based on community reports, the Ironbound neighborhood experienced flooding four times in the spring and summer of 2021 alone due to heavy rainfall. Residents of the Ironbound neighborhood and the community-based organization Ironbound Community Corporation have expressed significant concern about urban heat island effect and a lack of knowledge and resources pre-, during, and post-disaster. The proposed Ironbound Resilience Hub will help address these concerns for the neighborhood, including specific funding for the hub’s structural flood protection elements and nature-based solutions elements.
The Ann Street School will be the location of the hub. The hub will provide a central community center for dissemination of information and resources in the event of a disaster affecting the neighborhood. The hub will also serve emergency safe room and sheltering needs for extreme weather events. In addition, the Ann Street School will be equipped with a solar array and microgrid for power resilience. To address stormwater flooding, the project will use the large parking area adjacent to Ann Street School to provide subsurface stormwater storage. The project will also incorporate permeable pavement to collect street level stormwater into a high-level storm sewer system. Newark joined the coalition of municipalities working with the NJDEP in the Resilient Northeastern New Jersey program and is working with many state and local partners, such as Newark Public Schools, to implement this important project.