Living Breakwaters: Project Home

Living Breakwaters is an innovative coastal green infrastructure project designed to reduce or reverse erosion and damage from storm waves, improve the ecosystem health of Raritan Bay, and encourage stewardship of our nearshore waters and generally enhance people’s experience of the shoreline of southern Staten Island. The project was initially developed by SCAPE Landscape Architecture for the Rebuild by Design (RBD) Competition, a design competition held by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to seek cutting edge ideas for coastal resilience in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. The project is being implemented by the Governor’s Office of Storm Recovery and is funded by HUD through the Community Development Block Grant – Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) funding as well as with funds from New York State. Construction is scheduled to begin in the fall of 2021 and be completed by the fall of 2024.

Design Start Date: Summer 2015 Completion Date: Fall 2019 Procurement Start Date: Winter 2019 Completion Date: Winter 2020 Construction Start Date: August 2021 Projected Completion Date: Fall 2024

Funding Total Funding: $114,000,000 Sources HUD Community Development Block Grant – Disaster Recovery $97,118,843 New York State - $16,881,157 Includes Funding for: Design/Permitting/Planning Construction and Administration Social Resiliency Programming

 The breakwaters will be constructed from the southwest to the northeast (see plan below) between the summer/fall of 2021 and the end of 2024. The shoreline restoration component will start January 2024 and continue through April 2024.