OPINION:
When Hurricane Sandy flooded the New York City subways, I remember thinking to myself, “Gee, the city should spend a couple of million dollars upgrading the air-ventilation shafts and subway entrances to prevent this from happening again.” Now, we see that the mayor proposes a nearly $20 billion program to solve this problem (“NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg wants to spend $19.5B to fight hurricanes,” Web, June 12). Mr. Bloomberg’s plan includes building walls around lower Manhattan to keep out rising waters owing to global warming. But melting ice packs will only raise sea levels one inch per decade at most, so this is hardly worth building ugly walls that would destroy views from places like Battery Park. Surely, it would be better to simply protect air-ventilation shafts and subway entrances from the once-a-century Sandy-type storm.
BOB VAUGHAN
Lutherville, Md.
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