BEN HALLMAN FOR HUFFINGTON POST
SANDY’S
DEVASTATION
the hundreds of millions of dollars
required for adequate protection.
And advocates in places like the
Rockaways said that their pleas for
more beach replenishment there,
which might have blunted the impact of Sandy’s furious waters,
went largely unheeded.
Policymakers in New Jersey had
their own warnings that a severe
storm surge posed a major risk
to the state’s densely populated
coastline. In a series of reports
over the past decade, the state’s
Department of Environmental
Protection warned in stark terms
that increased risk of hurricanes
from climate change, coupled with
a continued population expansion
along New Jersey’s coast, had set
the stage for an enormously expensive disaster.
For decades, critics pushed for
greater scrutiny of new development by state and local officials
along the New Jersey coastline.
Yet new construction continued
unabated, as state law requires
only lenient reviews of smaller developments in coastal areas.
“There’s plenty of information
out there about the risk on the
Jersey Shore,” said Ken Mitchell,
a professor of geography at Rutgers University who has studied
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hurricane risks in New Jersey
and throughout the world. “But it
doesn’t seem to have reached deep
enough in the public policy system to do anything to handle the
magnitude of this storm.”
For example, Ocean County,
N.J., home to devastated communities including Seaside Heights
and Toms River, has been one of
the fastest growing counties in the
nation’s most densely populated
state. Between 1980 and 2010,
John Cori of
Friends of
Rockaways
Beach has
advocated
for a beach
restoration
project to
help protect
against
future storm
surges.