Officials are announcing steps to insulate Lower Manhattan and Battery Park, areas hit hard by Hurricane Sandy. NY1's Josh Robin filed the following report.

Storm water crested the battery in Lower Manhattan in late October 2012. It deluged the South Ferry subway station, Brooklyn Battery Tunnel and countless downtown buildings.

Experts are not just bracing for a repeat. In the era of rising sea levels, it may be worse.

"Hurricane Sandy vividly highlighted the risks and vulnerabilities in the battery, as well as across all of Lower Manhattan," said Daniel Zarrilli of the Mayor's Office of Recovery and Resiliency.

Vulnerabilities that Mayor Bill de Blasio plans to address with an $8 million flood protection system in Battery Park. What it will look like is unclear. It's a modest sum that the City Council is expected to approve.

"It gets us on a good start," said City Councilwoman Margaret Chin of Manhattan. "So we're just hopeful that we can continue to advocate for more federal dollars and state dollars to make sure that Lower Manhattan is protected."

Another roughly $7 million in city and state money goes to planning for more, ending at the north end of Battery Park City.

In all, that's barely a blip compared to a $335 million project on the Lower East Side already in the works. Picked by the Obama administration, it builds a rolling park and new pedestrian bridges. 

On the map, you can see that better funded plan as project 1. The lesser-funded plan announced Friday is 2.

Other parts of Manhattan, of course, flooded during Hurricane Sandy, and there are plans for more barriers, particularly along Manhattan's West Side.

The city and state are working piecemeal, building where money allows. No one expects Congress will soon again steer the hundreds of millions of dollars required for what experts say is their ideal five-borough plan. 

"What we're doing is, with the dollars we have now, we're spending them in the most effective possible way, and we're putting ourselves in a position to do that much bigger task sooner, and in a smarter way," said state Senator Daniel Squadron, whose district covers parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn.

Sooner, before it's too late.