AMNY: NYC officials held two community meetings last week to discuss their newest plans to protect the East Side from storm surges.

If this sounds familiar, it should. Meetings about such flood-protection efforts have gone on for nearly five years, since a broader project known as the Big U — stretching from West 57th Street around the Battery and up to East 42nd Street — won federal funding through a competition after Superstorm Sandy, which caused 43 deaths and $19 billion in damage across NYC.

But the most recent meetings come just months after NYC announced it would overhaul part of the Big U plan — known as the East Side Coastal Resiliency Project — focused on land from East 25th Street down to Montgomery Street, with particular attention to East River Park. READ MORE>>