New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Tuesday announced a $20 billion plan to prepare for rising sea levels and hotter summers expected as a result of climate change in the coming decades.

 

The more than 400-page plan, which follows widespread destruction wreaked by Superstorm Sandy last year, included about 250 recommendations ranging from new floodwalls and storm barriers to upgrades of power and telecommunications infrastructures.

 

The plan also contained prosaic ideas, such as building up beaches and using sand dunes and plantings as natural buffers to storm surges flooding.

 

A report commissioned by the city and issued alongside the proposals found that over the next 40 years, the number of sweltering summer days could double or even triple, making New York City as hot by mid-century as Birmingham, Alabama, is now.

 

By then, the sea level surrounding New York City could also rise by 2 feet or more.

 

Bloomberg's plan aims to ensure that the subway, transit, sewer and water, healthcare, energy and food distribution systems would continue to function for the city's 8 million people well into the future.

 

Sandy killed more than 100 people in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, knocked out power to millions and cost New York City an estimated $19 billion in damages and lost economic activity. Bloomberg said a storm of Sandy's strength would cost nearly five times that amount if it hit the city in the middle of this century because of rising sea levels.

 

The implementation of the plan would be "an important step toward improved resilience for the City," said Mark Way, head of Sustainability Americas Swiss Re, whose catastrophe model was the basis for the city's analysis.