MANTOLOKING, N.J. — With 60 homes swept away in superstorm Sandy, and another 200 likely to be demolished, residents of this oceanside borough will be lucky to be able to live in their surviving homes by Memorial Day.
Still, officials are struggling to persuade half of the 127 oceanfront property owners here to sign construction easements that will allow the Army Corps of Engineers to rebuild a wider beach and thick, 22-foot-high dunes against the next storm.
To skeptics, the issue of easements always has been one of ceding private property rights. But to borough and state officials, it’s about saving the community.
“We hope people listened to what was said and they will take that home and discuss it with their families, talk to their lawyers,” said Chris Nelson, special counsel for the borough in its post-Sandy crisis, after another meeting of Mantoloking Borough Council and residents that was held off the slim peninsula earlier this month.
Nelson and other borough officials hope talks at that meeting helped lay to rest fears that easements could, decades down the road, open the beach to public development — one of the chief reasons why some residents won’t sign the easements.
“Something can happen 30 or 40 years from now. A boardwalk could go in. Everyone I talk to says that can’t happen,” said beachfront owner Kevin O’Kane, who reiterated residents’ longstanding doubts about giving the government a perpetual easement to the land in front of their windows.
No, that won’t happen, said Benjamin Keiser, manager of the state’s Bureau of Coastal Engineering. Work within the easements is confined to “the project” as defined in the Army Corps chief’s report, which specifies that the easements are limited to beach and dune work.
Other longtime doubters said they decided to sign easements after seeing the storm devastate their neighborhoods — and after seeing the recent political mayhem in Congress over storm relief spending.
“If this is funded now, I don’t think we’re going to get it again,” one homeowner said.
On Monday, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said it’s imperative for homeowners to sign easements.
“I think that we now know that having aggressive dune systems works,” Christie said. “The thing that frustrates me the most right now is not the towns, but some of the homeowners who are still arguing and debating about whether or not they want to give easements to have dunes built. I think that’s extraordinarily selfish and short-sighted for the people of this state.”
New Jersey beachfront living generally entitles the owner to some, if not all, of the sand in front of their house down to the high-tide mark.
These private beaches are a legacy dating back to the creation of 19th century resorts along the Jersey Shore. When both Mantoloking and Bay Head, N.J., directly up the coast were created as affluent resort towns, oceanfront lots extended to the high water mark, and in some instances the state granted tidelands ownership 1,000 feet into the ocean.
This makes beach replenishment and dune construction complicated. And many of these homeowners are wealthy business people, doctors, lawyers and retirees who can afford to fight for a long time.
Borough and state officials have worked hard to allay residents’ concerns. After a panel discussion about beach replenishment, the Army Corps revised easements to make it clear that the construction access is purely for beach and dune work.
Engineers estimated the Oct. 29 storm surge removed 1 million cubic yards of sand off the beaches here and into northern Barnegat Bay on the western side of the peninsula, where it remains as large new sandbars. Before the storm, the corps estimated the borough needed an additional 2 million cubic yards of sand mined off the sea floor to build a beach 100 feet wider. Now, it needs 3 million yards.
The Army Corps began planning its Bay Head-to-Island Beach replenishment project in 2002 and received congressional authorization in 2007. The primary holdup has been obtaining easements.
The Army Corps began planning its Bay Head-to-Island Beach replenishment project in 2002 and received congressional authorization in 2007. The primary holdup has been obtaining easements.
“Bay Head has made no decision,” said Borough Councilwoman D’Arcy Rohan Green, who says she saw similar resistance to easements before the storm. Now, she thinks “this has changed dramatically” among oceanfront owners.
“It’s our intention in Bay Head to hold presentations” on the beach replenishment plan soon, Green said. If that leads to enough easements being signed, the Army Corps of Engineers and state could begin plans to start replenishment.
Corps spokesman Ed Voigt says his agency is less insistent than it used to be on having all the towns within a project lined up and ready to go.
“Our effort is still to try to build the whole project. It works most efficiently that way,” Voigt told Mantoloking residents. Faced with easement resistance on Long Beach Island, N.J., and towns that opted out of the Absecon Island project near Atlantic City, N.J., the engineers have done sections at a time.
Peter R. Strohm, a member of the Mantoloking Borough Council and veteran of the effort to get a Corps of Engineers’ project, remembered visiting the Gulf of Mexico coast after Hurricane Katrina.
“It was a come-to-Jesus moment when I saw what Katrina could do,” Strohm said. At the time, he thought, if Mantoloking residents could see what he saw, “people would line up at borough hall” to sign easements.
But still, homeowners “worried they would be disturbed by Ferris wheels on the beach or whatever else they imagined,” he said. “Now the people who worried about being disturbed don’t have to worry about it because they don’t have homes.”
Contributing: Michael Diamond, Asbury Park (N.J.) Press
Source of this article can be found here: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/01/15/sandy-beach-restoration-easements/1566372/
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