The Living Breakwaters: A model for nature-based infrastructure –Tottenville, South Shore of Staten Island

Enhancing Physical, Ecological and Social Resilience with SCAPE Studios and NYS Homes and Community Renewal’s (HCR) Office of Resilient Homes and Communities.

The Living Breakwaters Project is a coastal resiliency and habitat enhancement initiative along the Tottenville shoreline of Staten Island. The project is led and designed by SCAPE Studio developed through the HUD-sponsored Rebuild By Design competition for NYS Homes and Community Renewal’s (HCR) Office of Resilient Homes and Communities.

IN THE WAKE OF SUPERSTORM SANDY

If you ask a longtime New Yorker about the unforgettable historical moments that have shaped their city-dwelling experience, 9/11 and then a little over a decade later, Superstorm Sandy, are likely top of their list. For many New Yorkers in Staten Island, Red Hook, and waterfront neighborhoods in Queens, Sandy’s impacts remain visible and still very close to home. 

The impact of Sandy on New York City and New Jersey in the fall of 2012 was profound and deeply felt. The storm claimed 44 lives, destroyed thousands of homes and businesses, and dramatically reshaped coastal communities. Spanning over 1,000 miles, the superstorm brought powerful winds and waves reaching up to 14 feet, leaving a lasting mark on the region and its people.

 As described in Sandy and Its Impacts, a report by the Special Initiative for Rebuilding and Resiliency (SIRR), the storm surge, coming on top of the spring high tide, created a “storm tide” of over 14 feet above Mean Lower Low Water at The Battery in New York Harbor, shattering the previous record of 10 feet, set when Hurricane Donna hit New York in 1960. The city estimated over $19 billion in total damages from Sandy—largely due to storm surge, intensified by the changing climate.

Thankfully, New York City and state leaders took no time in developing short and long-term recovery plans. Former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo quickly launched the Governor's Office of Storm Recovery. Governor Kathy Hochul later created the Office of Resilient Homes and Communities (RHC) to lead New York's housing recovery and community resiliency efforts. As a permanent office within New York State Homes and Community Renewal, RHC assumed the State’s storm recovery portfolio and partner with its disaster-response agencies to lead the long-term recovery for homes and communities and develop a pipeline of resiliency initiatives and strategies across the State. 

Enter The Living Breakwaters–400-foot-long offshore structures designed to protect the south Staten Island shoreline from wave action and coastal erosion while creating and enhancing habitat. 

LIVING BREAKWATERS: 2021 AND BEYOND

The Living Breakwaters project was initially developed by SCAPE Landscape Architecture for the Rebuild by Design (RBD) Competition, held by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to seek cutting-edge ideas for coastal resilience after Superstorm Sandy. The project was implemented by New York State and is funded primarily by HUD through the Community Development Block Grant – Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) funding. Construction began in 2021 and was completed in 2024. The project team brought in our restoration team to lead the ecological enhancement of The Living Breakwaters with live oysters.

Located offshore of Tottenville, The Living Breakwaters are designed with “reef ridges” and “reef streets” to dissipate wave energy and provide habitats. Informed by extensive hydrodynamic modeling, they are also designed to mitigate beach erosion along the Tottenville shoreline. Peter Sertzoglou, Project Manager at HCR, explains: 

“Waterfront communities, like Tottenville, are considered high wave action zones, more susceptible to flooding. But now, because of The Living Breakwaters, uninhibited wave action is mitigated. Reduced wave action thereby mitigates shoreline erosion, and impacts beyond the immediate shoreline, too.” 

Not far from Sandy Ground on Staten Island or Tottenville, is the nation’s oldest continuously settled free Black community. A once-booming oyster industry, Sandy Ground was home to the Black oystermen. Storm surge used to be less common on the coastlines. As Carolyn Khoury, our Director of Restoration explains, 

“New York Harbor used to have natural breaks in the form of tidal wetlands and oyster reefs, [but European colonization and their subsequent industrialization of the harbor and waterfront removed these natural barriers and protections.] Now, nature-based solutions like The Living Breakwaters and oyster reef restoration are critical projects to advance in New York Harbor.”

As a nature-based solution, The Living Breakwaters aim to achieve the following: 

• Risk Reduction: Address both event-based and long-term shoreline erosion to preserve or increase beach width; attenuate storm waves to improve safety and prevent damage to buildings and infrastructure. 

• Ecological Enhancement: Increase the diversity of aquatic habitats in the Lower New York Harbor / Raritan Bay (e.g., oyster reefs and fish and shellfish habitat), particularly rocky or hard-structured habitat that can function much like the oyster reefs that were historically found in this area.  

• Foster Social Resilience: Provide programming that builds a community around education on coastal resilience and ecosystem stewardship; foster and encourage community stewardship and citizen science, and enhance access to the water’s edge and near-shore waters for recreation, education, research, and stewardship activities.

“The Living Breakwaters are the first of their kind in the world in terms of size, function and nature-based design. We are mimicking natural habitats and complex ecosystems through these structures,” explains Pippa Brashear, Resilience Principal and Partner at SCAPE. “They are living systems that, like climate change, will continue to evolve. Even if we never had another storm, the risk reduction and community resilience benefits of The Living Breakwaters would still be beneficial.”

While the team at SCAPE built, conducted, and rigorously tested what became an Obel-award-winning design “for their radical breakwaters design and community and ecosystems-driven approach to adaptation,” we supported HCR with community engagement. Our goal was to hear from as many residents, daily visitors, and leaders of the Tottenville community as possible. From helping to map efficient delivery routes for the multi-ton rocks, to hosting community beach walks, and working with community leaders to minimize negative impacts, HRC prioritized engaging folks at every touch point. 

“We've been engaging waterfront communities in Staten Island and surrounding areas for a very long time,” says Devon Shumate, Managing Director at HCR and Principal for The Living Breakwaters Project. “We wanted to ensure people had an understanding of the multiple benefits of the breakwaters for Tottenville and New York State.” 

Construction of The Living Breakwaters began in 2021, and was completed in the fall of 2024. Today, our restoration team at Billion Oyster Project, led by Carolyn, leads the project’s third phase through the implementation of oyster restoration on four of the eight breakwaters. In 2025, the restoration team will directly “seed” one of the breakwaters with oyster larvae through an in situ trial. In 2026, the restoration team will seed approximately 5,000 ECOncrete disk structures with juvenile oysters for installation on four breakwaters.   

curtain protection around oyster larvae setting areas to maximize in-situ recruitment

prepping millions of oyster larvae on the breakwaters for in-situ setting

introducing oyster larvae to the edges of the breakwaters

“For this initial phase of restoration and monitoring, we want to add cohorts of oysters to the breakwaters and observe the trends: their growth, mortality, and recruitment, among other parameters.  We want to know if the oysters we introduce survive to reproductive maturity and spawn. Over time, we want to see these populations develop into self-sustaining ones,” explains Carolyn. 

By including fish and shellfish enhancement in the design of the breakwaters from the start of the project, SCAPE showcases how substrate in the water contributes to shoreline protection and marine biodiversity, too. The hopes are for all eight of the breakwaters to eventually host oyster reefs to increase marine biodiversity, and almost immediately provide new fishing grounds for residents. 

“Oysters are a gateway for learning about how New York Harbor’s ecosystem works,” says Pippa. “Not only do they create habitat for other species, but also they attenuate  waves, filter water, and are a great teaching tool to learn about the sort of complexities of coastal risk and coastal resilience.” 

The Living Breakwaters, unlike a lot of our other projects, are very unique for us, and for local communities. As Cate Collinson, our Senior Restoration Project Manager describes it, “because they are visually accessible, people can witness and see restoration in a very tangible way.”  

We hope you’ll get a chance to witness them, too. Anecdotally, we’ve heard that local fishermen have seen rays, sharks, bald eagles, and seals all back and enjoying what have become permanent fixtures of Tottenville and New York Harbor, The Living Breakwaters. 

Stay in touch with our work and up to date on The Living Breakwaters as we start phase three’s in situ trials, and monitoring in phase four. Check out the incredible work of our partners, SCAPE, and HCR. Read the New Yorker feature about The Living Breakwaters. Read Sandy and Its Impacts.