BIKE the barrier.
A 14-mile walking and cycling path under construction along the western rim of Brooklyn could become the borough’s first line of defense against Superstorm Sandy-like flooding.
Designers behind the Greenway unveiled plans for eco-friendly features, such as rain gardens, that could divert as much as a half-billion gallons away from the borough’s sewer system.
“We can be environmentally friendly and have beautification at the same time,” Borough President Eric Adams said Tuesday at a news conference.
The Greenway is scheduled to be built during the next decade and will curl along the East River from Greenpoint to Bay Ridge.
Spearheaded by the nonprofit Brooklyn Greenway Initiative, the long-planned project is expected to cost between $100 million and $200 million, officials said. The money will come from a mixture of federal, state and city funds, officials said.
What started as plans for a long biking trail has evolved to include proposals for wetlands, catch basins and wave-blocking berms.
“It would be a shame 20 years from now to look back and say, ‘I wish we had thought of green infrastructure,’ ” Brooklyn Greenway Initiative co-founder Milton Puryear said.
The plans lean on creative landscaping to capture and move the water up the slope from the waterfront, dispersing it before it can overfill the combined sewer system and dump into the Newtown Creek, Gowanus Canal, East River or other waterways.
“When we think about the Brooklyn Greenway as a route, we think about it being a corridor that moves people, bikes, skaters, skateboarders,” said Tricia Martin of We Design, the private firm working on the plans.
“We started to think it also could be a great corridor for moving water and the collection of water,” Martin added.
Pieces of the 23 segments that will one day form a continuous route are already in use.
Stretches through Brooklyn Bridge Park, Kent Ave. in North Brooklyn and Columbia St. along the Carroll Gardens waterfront are open, and new construction on additional sites is expected to begin by the end of the year.
“To all those partners along the waterfront for years who thought this day would never come, we realize more than a tree grows in Brooklyn,” Adams said.
