Ten Years After Sandy, Flood And Storm Mitigation Still Isn't Finished

But 10 years isn’t all that much time in terms of addressing infrastructure and putting flood mitigation plans into action. While dunes have been replenished and floodgates constructed, many mitigation projects to address the threats of storms and the changing climate along the Jersey Shore are still in the planning stages, and even more drastic solutions, like a buyout program in some of the most vulnerable areas, struggled to convince beach lovers.

(​MORE: Superstorm Sandy: A Look Back)

We sent photographer Liz Roll to document what’s been done so far and what’s in the works in some of the New Jersey towns hardest-hit by Sandy.

U​nion Beach

Sandy brought widespread damage to Union Beach, New Jersey, damaging 85% of the town’s homes. The less-than-2-square-mile area is not a vacation town, but is home to more than 5,000 mostly working-class residents year-round, with a median property value of $296,100.

By Mayor Charles Cucuzza’s estimations, Sandy flooded about 90% of Union Beach, which experiences flooding from the Raritan Bay and the town’s many creeks even when a hurricane isn’t in the forecast, especially during full moon high tides.

Before Superstorm Sandy’s devastation, the town had been hoping to make way on a flood mitigation plan to address coastal flooding. The plan, first explored in 1995, was finally approved in 2007, but it didn’t attract federal funding until after Sandy made it obvious how badly the changes were needed.

Finally, in 2023 – more than 10 years after Sandy’s destructive landfall, and 27 years after beginning talks on flood mitigation – the Army Corps of Engineers is set to begin the first phase of a more expansive flood control project than was originally proposed. The $50 million contract focuses on constructing a berm along the beach to protect from storm surge, which is expected to be completed in 2024. The entirety of the project includes earthen levees, concrete floodwalls, interior levees, primary and secondary drainage outlet structures, tide gate structures, pump stations, beach and dune restoration, raising roads, buildings and infrastructure in flood-prone areas, relocating government buildings from flood zones and more.

Cucuzza calls Brook Avenue the town’s Ground Zero for Sandy’s flooding. Some of the homes and buildings on the road are still not rebuilt as the town waits for Phase Two of the Raritan Bay Project to be confirmed. Cucuzza said Phase Two may not start until 2027 or later.

“I wish it could have been done a lot quicker,” Cucuzza told weather.com. “But I believe because of all the different governmental agencies involved, it appears to be standard procedure for a project of this size to take this long to get off the ground.”

The bridge on Broadway connecting Keyport and Union Beach was raised by Monmouth County in 2021. The bridge was under several feet of water and impassable when Sandy struck in 2012. It’s also one of the Union Beach locations that often flooded during an otherwise unnoteworthy rainy day.

For those who have rebuilt, borough ordinances required that homes be raised 3 feet above base flood elevation. That’s 2 feet above FEMA’s requirements. According to Cucuzza, about 70% of Union Beach’s homes are now raised.

“We required residents to go 3 feet above base flood elevation so that in the event that FEMA finally does adopt the permanent flood maps, everyone will be OK,” Cucuzza said. “We don’t want someone to raise their home and then find out that they weren’t high enough.”

M​antoloking

Mantoloking is a vacation town. It’s home to under 500 year-round residents according to 2020 numbers, but the population explodes to about 5,000 come summer, when people flock to their stately beach houses.

That’s what made Sandy’s destruction here so striking. Mantoloking is wealthy, with a median property value of $1.67 million. The storm only destroyed about half the number of homes compared to Union Beach. But the homes here are large, and to see those gorgeous houses catawampus in the middle of a sand-strewn street struck something deep in the Jersey Shore psyche.

In hopes of preventing future storm damage, 4 miles of new dunes were constructed spanning from Bay Head to Mantoloking and through the city of Brick. Inside those dunes is a steel wall meant to hold back the sea that reaches to 14 feet above base flood elevation. The seawall is 4 miles long, 16 feet above the beach and 32 feet below ground, but entirely sand-covered.

Some owners of beachfront property fought the easements needed to construct the dunes, pushing back completion dates. Citing everything from vague language to loss of ocean views, the fight went on for almost a year until the town was finally forced to enact eminent domain on seven properties. The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection’s Division of Coastal Engineering listed this project as complete in 2015.

S​ea Bright

Sea Bright’s flooding during Sandy didn’t just come from the ocean. The town is flanked by water on both sides – ocean to the east, while the Navesink and Shrewsbury rivers meet on the west.

The day Sandy made landfall, the Nevansink crested to 11.73 feet and flooded Sea Bright’s non-beach side. The major flooding level for the river comes at 7.2 feet and is severe enough to cause structural damage, roadway flooding and even destroy homes and businesses in Sea Bright and other nearby towns.

Sea Bright is the type of place you might look to rent a big home for a weeklong shore stay with extended family using money you pooled together. It has a median property value of over $700,000. Just 60% of the population lived in the town year-round just before Sandy struck in 2012, according to the New York Times. Recent numbers have the population at around 1,300, which nearly doubles during the summer months.

“We still have more bulkheads along the river that need to be elevated to provide one continuous bulkhead system that’s at the new height designated by the Army Corps of Engineers,” borough administrator Joe Verruni explained. “We still have some work to do downtown. Although much has been achieved down there, there’s still some work to do.”

Many of the bulkheads that are on public property in Sea Bright have been raised to 7 feet above sea level since Sandy. A 0.6-mile stretch of bulkheads – from what is now the Shrewsbury Riverfront Park, where an apartment complex once stood before Sandy destroyed it, to Osborne Place, which according to Verruni is the area that’s most commonly flooded during storms – were of most concern. The holdup is multi-faceted, according to Verruni.

“Some are on private property. Some are in the area where the county is redoing the [Rumson-Sea Bright] Bridge. They will be doing that, but it’s not completed yet,” Verruni said.

M​iddletown

Sandy destroyed 750 homes in Middletown, New Jersey. Another year-round town like Union Beach, Middletown is New Jersey’s 20th most populated city and was home to more than 67,000 people in 2021. In the town’s hard-hit Port Monmouth neighborhood, the median property value is $293,800.

The Port Monmouth Flood Control Project began in Middletown about a year and a half after the storm. The more-than-$265-million federally funded initiative is the state’s largest and most expensive mitigation project currently in the works, the Army Corps of Engineers confirmed via Middletown Communications director Tara Berson, and is taking place in five contracts, all of which will help prevent flooding in the Port Monmouth neighborhood, which flooded the worst during Sandy.

The most recently completed phase of the project was finished in August 2020. So far, the Port Monmouth Flood Control Project has addressed wetlands mitigation; built a 40-foot-wide flood gate and pumping station along Pews Creek; constructed the Port Monmouth Road floodwall; raised pavement along Highway 36; and conducted electrical utility upgrades on Main Street.

A series of floodwalls, levees and pumps are still in the works and are estimated to be completed by April 2025.

Berson confirmed that the town has experienced what she referred to as “routine street flooding” since Sandy, though she said it has improved even with the flood control project only partially completed. Berson said that none of the flooding in the last 10 years has caused reported property damage.

S​tronger Than The Storm

The “Stronger than the Storm” ad campaign that played on tv and the radio and was plastered across billboards throughout the state became the theme of the Sandy rebuild. It was funded by The United States Department of Housing and Urban Development to promote tourism at the Jersey Shore despite the devastation. New Jerseyans weren’t about to let a pesky superstorm ruin the 2013 summer. The Jersey Shore is an integral part of the culture of the state. The summer revolves around which weekends are sunny enough and not too hot for the beach.

It was “Jersey Strong” this and “Jersey Pride” that on t-shirts and lawn signs. But this continuous amp-up may have turned the state from the most common-sense option for some closest to the water – retreat.

The reality is, despite new seawalls, berms, reinforced dunes and stilts, many of the homes along the New Jersey coast will be underwater within decades. It’s a short-term solution, giving some homeowners and beach lovers a few more summers to ignore the inevitability. A recent report by Climate Central predicts that more than 6,000 New Jersey buildings will be below sea level by 2050 – less than 30 years from now – flooding with daily high tides.

In the wake of the superstorm, the federal government gave the state of New Jersey $300 million to buy homes in the most vulnerable areas, offering homeowners pre-Sandy value. The point was to demolish the empty houses and leave the land undeveloped, allowing for a buffer between civilization and the sea.

“The fundamental ecological idea that people cannot get through their heads is that coastal systems are dynamic,” Tim Dillingham, executive director of New Jersey environmental group The American Littoral Society, told Bloomberg in 2017. “You cannot hold them in place, which is what all this is about — trying to hold them in place so we can have houses on them.”

The buyout program, called Blue Acres, began in the 1990s but expanded after Sandy as well as after Hurricane Ida in 2021. Like the flood mitigation projects, it had a slow start. It wasn’t just the homeowners that needed convincing, even the local governments were slow to enact the plan in their towns. In 2021, available numbers showed that only about two-thirds of the $300 million had been spent, prior to more funding being added that year when interest in the project was revived after Hurricane Ida hit the state causing widespread devastating inland flooding and killing 23 people.

Maybe nine years was enough for some New Jerseyans to admit living in and near changing flood zones wasn’t working out. Maybe New Jerseyans weren’t against retreat in general, but few were willing to let go of the Jersey Shore.

“The barrier island is so unique,” Jena McCredie, who owns a vacation home in Mantoloking with her family, explained. “Crossing over the bridge from Toms River or driving from Point Pleasant on [Route] 35, the feeling you get of excitement can’t be put into words. The kids know we are getting close to home and all other worries about everyday life just go away – it’s the escape like you are on vacation every weekend.”

The home McCredie shares with her family was already on stilts by October 2012 and sustained minor damage from Sandy— a boat landed in the yard destroying a fence and some of the property, roofing and air conditioning units needed to be replaced. But directly next door, an entire community of bungalows were destroyed by surge and fire. The weekend of Sandy’s 10th anniversary, a groundbreaking ceremony will be held to celebrate 67 new homes that are to be built where the bungalows were washed away.

Mantoloking, Middletown, Union Beach and Sea Bright are just four of the many New Jersey towns that were impacted by Sandy and have experienced the sluggish progress of mitigation, while the future fate of homes hangs in the balance. There is a lot of paperwork. It requires a lot of funding. And that’s often before ground is broken. Each project requires the cooperation and work of several different agencies across various levels of government. Some, like in Mantoloking, get placed on hold while residents resist.

And as the years pass, people’s homes and businesses are at risk. The hurricane seasons tick on, and New Jersey awaits the next “big one.”

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