US shore towns resist sand-dune buffers as storms gather

Bloomberg

Governor Chris Christie’s warning of Hurricane Sandy-like destruction of the New Jersey shore will be tested as the worst storm season in three years approaches and beachfront homeowners delay his building protective dunes along all 127 miles of the state’s coast.
Christie, a second-term Republican, has been battling with property owners in court over his plan to erect sand barriers to keep floodwaters at bay. Without signed easements, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers won’t begin work, leaving whole towns like Margate and Mantoloking vulnerable to tidal surges.
The Atlantic basin this year is ripe for 12 named tropical storms, the most since 2013, according to Colorado State University meteorologists. Other forecasters predict as many as 16. Christie, 53, has said that without the dunes, New Jersey won’t be ready to withstand another beating like Sandy. That October 2012 storm, one of the costliest in U.S. history, caused $36.9 billion of damage and slowed New Jersey’s economic recovery.
“We won’t be 100 percent comfortable until this whole beach-replenishment project is completed,” said Mayor Tom Kelaher of Toms River, where more than 10,000 homes were destroyed or damaged by Sandy.

Bouncing Waves
Brick Township, with 2.9 kilometers of oceanfront, isn’t waiting for court rulings. It’s spending $600,000 to reconstruct 16-foot sand piles lost in October, when waves driven by offshore Hurricane Joaquin exposed a steel bulkhead. “Any time there’s a storm — just a simple high tide with a full moon — the waves are bouncing off that wall,” Brick Mayor John Ducey said in an interview. For now, public-works crews and bulldozers are doing what the Army Corps can’t, until construction easements are secured on 158 properties in eight towns.
At risk is the state’s $41.2 billion tourism industry, most of it shore-generated, and some of the most valuable real estate in New Jersey. The four Jersey Shore counties have combined property value, for tax purposes, of $293.5 billion, about a third of the state’s total.

Vulnerable Patches
Though federal projects costing hundreds of millions of dollars have put New Jersey’s coastline in its best shape since Sandy, gaps remain in some of the hardest-hit areas.
Homeowner Paul Jeffrey, president of the Ortley Beach Voters and Taxpayers Association, says oceanfront property owners are being short-sighted.
“It’s not much different from building highways and building airports that someone determines is for the public good,” said Jeffrey, 63. Toms River, which governs Ortley, has been reimbursed $1.75 million by the state for sand it’s piled on its beaches after storms in October and January.

Oceanside Mansions
While Ortley is popular with middle-class vacationers, towns toward the barrier’s north draw a more moneyed crowd. Actor Joe Pesci owns a home on a bayside island in Lavallette, and makeup company founder Bobbi Brown and her developer husband, Steven Plofker, have a summer home in Bay Head. The Point Pleasant oceanfront vacation house owned by Christie’s brother, Wall Street veteran Todd Christie, is among those that would get added protection from dunes. “I believe 100 percent that the protective dunes should be built and any person or entity, including my homeowners association, causing delay is putting our community at risk,” Todd Christie said in a Feb. 2 statement released by the governor’s office.
“If this was an individual decision and not one of the association, I would have signed an easement years ago.”