New York Sea Grant convened five Jamaica Bay Community Flood Fellowship Program sessions to inaugurate this new program in 2024. Above, a session at Floyd Bennett Field. Credit: Kayla Walsh/NYSG

Contact: 

Hannah Burnett, NYSG Coastal Resilience Extension Specialist, E: heb84@cornell.edu, P: (718) 841-7609

NYSG has launched a flood risk training and networking program in response to requests by Jamaica Bay community members

Brooklyn, NY, May 27, 2025 - High tide flooding affects many aspects of New York City residents’ daily lives, including commutes, access to food and healthcare, and personal property (Campbell et al. 2021*). New York Sea Grant (NYSG) has heard from many community partners that they need support in accessing the educational resources and social and professional networks required to take informed action to address chronic flooding.

With funding from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in 2024, NYSG collaborated with the Science and Resilience Institute at Jamaica Bay to develop and launch the first Jamaica Bay Community Flood Fellowship Program. This training and networking program convenes community leaders to help build coastal resilience in neighborhoods around Jamaica Bay. The Fellows include representatives of Brighton Beach, Canarsie, Coney Island, East Flatbush/Flatlands, Edgemere, Far Rockaway, New Hamilton Beach, and Sea Gate.

In the spring, NYSG held five convenings of the Fellowship Program, connecting 12 community leaders from neighborhoods across the Jamaica Bay watershed. Fellows learned about tools and resources to understand flood risk, prepare for flooding, and mitigate its effects, and developed resources, extension materials, and outreach activities to share these resources with their communities. This first Jamaica Bay Community Flood Fellowship Program culminated in a public forum at which the Fellows presented about flooding in their neighborhoods. In exit surveys after each convening, Flood Fellows indicated that the knowledge they gained was meaningful, and 100% stated they would incorporate the learning from this program into their community-based work.

The Jamaica Bay Community Flood Fellowship Program recognizes that Jamaica Bay residents understand their own communities best, and leverages their insight to identify pathways towards community-based coastal flood resilience.

Project Partners/Funders:

• Science and Resilience Institute at Jamaica Bay
• Funding: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

* Campbell, L. K., Cheng, H., Svendsen, E., Kochnower, D., Bunting-Howarth, K., & Wapnitsky, P. (2021). Living with water: Documenting lived experience and social-emotional impacts of chronic flooding for local adaptation planning. Cities and the Environment (CATE), 14(1), 4.

More Info: New York Sea Grant

Established in 1966, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)’s National Sea Grant College Program promotes the informed stewardship of coastal resources in 34 joint federal/state university-based programs in every U.S. coastal state (marine and Great Lakes) and Puerto Rico. The Sea Grant model has also inspired similar projects in the Pacific region, Korea and Indonesia.

Since 1971, New York Sea Grant (NYSG) has represented a statewide network of integrated research, education and extension services promoting coastal community economic vitality, environmental sustainability and citizen awareness and understanding about the State’s marine and Great Lakes resources.

NYSG historically leverages on average a 3 to 6-fold return on each invested federal dollar, annually. We benefit from this, as these resources are invested in Sea Grant staff and their work in communities right here in New York.

Through NYSG’s efforts, the combined talents of university scientists and extension specialists help develop and transfer science-based information to many coastal user groups—businesses and industries, federal, state and local government decision-makers and agency managers, educators, the media and the interested public.

New York Sea Grant, one of the largest of the state Sea Grant programs, is a cooperative program of the State University of New York (SUNY) and Cornell University. The program maintains Great Lakes offices at Cornell University, SUNY Buffalo, Rochester Institute of Technology, SUNY Oswego, the Wayne County Cooperative Extension office in Newark, and in Watertown. In the State's marine waters, NYSG has offices at Stony Brook University and with Cornell Cooperative Extension of Nassau County on Long Island, in Queens, at Brooklyn College, with Cornell Cooperative Extension in NYC, in Bronx, with Cornell Cooperative Extension of Ulster County in Kingston, and with Cornell Cooperative Extension of Westchester County in Elmsford.

For updates on Sea Grant activities: www.nyseagrant.org, follow us on social media (Facebook, Twitter/X, Instagram, Bluesky, LinkedIn, and YouTube). NYSG offers a free e-list sign up via www.nyseagrant.org/nycoastlines for its flagship publication, NY Coastlines/Currents, which it publishes 2-3 times a year.