Summer heat is back and Eddie Bautista says New York City isn’t ready.
“There appears to be, at least from our perspective, a real lack of urgency,” said Bautista, executive director of the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance.
His nonprofit – a network linking grassroots organizations from low-income neighborhoods and communities of color across the city – has been monitoring city government’s efforts to keep people safe from the heat, which can be a life-or-death issue for many who live in under-resourced communities.
The City Council passed a set of bills in 2020 intended to ensure the city could better respond to extreme heat, including a bill requiring a citywide plan on how to keep residents cool on hot days and inform people about heat-related emergencies.
Spokespeople for Mayor Eric Adams did not respond to a request for comment, but the NYC Emergency Management website details some of the city’s initiatives.
It notes that during periods of extreme heat, the city opens air-conditioned spaces called cooling centers, and installs spray caps on certain fire hydrants. The city also provides a map with locations of water fountains, tree cover, sprinklers, and pools to beat the heat.
Bautista said the city can do a lot better and needs to, given the imperative of climate change.
New York City has already broken heat records this year, ahead of an anticipated hotter-than-usual summer. The city Panel on Climate Change predicts that the number of days with temperatures above 90 degrees is expected to at least double, and the number of heat waves will triple by the 2050s.
Studies show the consequences of extreme heat are most dire for low-income Black and brown residents. Lower-income neighborhoods face higher temperatures in already hot urban areas, due to an uneven spread in vegetation and buildings. And because of longstanding racial inequities in housing, health care, and other spheres, Black New Yorkers are twice as likely to die from…
Read the full article here
Leave a Reply