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DEP Approves Private Sea Wall, In Secret, With No Public Notice

Sea Walls Don’t Work and Will Make Problems Worse

waves crash over sea wall in Winthrop Mass. (2/8/13 - Getty Images)

“New Jersey was really a giant science experiment,” he’d told me.  “New Jersey was the home of some of the first vacation spots and one of the first places to arm their beaches. Thanks to New Jersey we learned that any sort of hard stabilization—sea walls, groins, and jetties—was very damaging to the beach.  We learned that the damage occurs just by building something fixed by the beach—could be a highway, for instance. The problem of beaches is that they are eroding and always moving.  The beach tends to move toward that fixed thing and get narrower and narrower and narrower until it disappears altogether.” […] [Professor Pilkey]

[Update below]

In a stunning display of arrogance and incompetence, the Christie DEP just issued an “emergency” permit to construct a private sea wall in front of 15 homes in Bay Head.

That move reveals that DEP simply doesn’t know – or care – that the ocean & beach are publicly owned resources that they are responsible for stewarding.

DEP seems oblivious to the fact that the shore and barriers islands are a dynamic natural system – what happens in one beach location impacts other locations, along the shore, back bay, and inland as well.

And it also looks like DEP Commissioner Martin didn’t read my memo!  

Memo to Gov. Christie: Sea Walls and Engineering Don’t Work – Our Friends in Massachusetts Know That

ONLY AS A LAST RESORT: Flood and Erosion Control Structures

In the past, protecting coastal shorelines often meant structural projects like seawalls, groins, rip-rap, and levees. As understanding of natural shoreline function improves, there is a growing acceptance that structural solutions frequently cause more problems than they solve, and they are often not allowed under the Massachusetts Wetlands Protection Act. Structural protective measures often:

According to Todd Bates at the Asbury Park Press:

BAY HEAD — Without public notice, the state last month approved a plan to build a stone seawall in front of 15 oceanfront properties.

State environmental officials granted emergency approval for the project because they want “to ensure, for public health and safety reasons, we get this moving along to prevent future damage in future storms,” said Larry Ragonese, spokesman for the Department of Environmental Protection.

“Public health and safety”? Are you kidding me? This is a private 1,300 foot long structure and it will not only not “prevent future damage” but will make current erosion and flooding problems worse.

The AP picked up the story, which ran under a more provocative – an apt – headline: Bay Head homeowners to build, finance 1,300-foot sea wall

Even beach engineering supporter Professor Farrell was forced to admit the problems created by sea walls:

Stewart C. Farrell, director of the Coastal Research Center at Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, said if the seawall is extended as the core of a future dune system, its construction must be consistent along its length and have no gaps.

Gaps “will absolutely focus the force of the next storm,” and properties beyond the end of any seawall are also at risk, Farrell said. If waves consistently get to a seawall over time, “there will be no beach,” as was the case in Sea Bright before the first beach replenishment there in the 1990s, he said.

So, properties “beyond” this 1,300 foot long sea wall will be harmed, as will the beach.

So, why died DEP approve it? And secretly, with no public comment?

Hey you, don’t help them to bury the light, 
Don’t give in without a fight.  ~~~ Hey You – The Wall, Pink Floyd (1979)

“Don’t accept that what’s happening
Is just a case of others’ suffering
Or you’ll find that you’re joining in
The turning away.

It’s a sin that somehow
Light is changing to shadow
And casting it’s shroud
Over all we have known ~~~  “On the turning away” (A Momentary Lapse of Reason, Pink Floyd,  – 1987)

FDR estate - Hyde Park, NY

(for more photos see: A Visit to FDR’s Estate on the Hudson)

I just read this wonderful essay on the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) in the March 2013 Newsletter of The Living New Deal, by Gray Brechin, Ph.D. Project Scholar for the Living New Deal.

The Living New Deal is an outstanding project that documents and maps the living legacy of the New Deal – I strongly encourage readers to check it out and support their work.

This short essay on the CCC is so inspiring and timely, I thought I’d post the whole thing here:

I looked up from news of another mass shooting at the industrial wasteland passing by the Metroliner on my way to D.C.  I saw a cage full of young men who have few prospects now but drugs, prison, and the military, and I recalled Franklin Roosevelt’s declaration during the last depression that no nation, no matter how rich, can afford to waste its human and natural resources. That connection by a man who, according to his wife, studied the American landscape from train windows so that he would know what was needed when he took office, spawned the Civilian Conservation Corps as a top priority of his presidency.

CCC Men at Work
Prince George’s County, Maryland
Photo Credit: Library of Congress

 

As remarkable a feat as the full-scale mobilization for war less than nine years later, the CCC saved the lives of millions of young men and their families. It provides a lesson by which we could once again save the land, water, and people whom we treat today as if we are rich enough to squander them en masse.

Roosevelt knew and loved trees. He planted thousands of them on his Hudson River estate both for their beauty and as a cash crop. As governor of New York while the nation sank deeper into the Great Depression, he pioneered a work relief program of reforestation that he would expand to national scope as president.

Just two days after his inauguration on March 4, 1933, FDR called a meeting of top administration executives to discuss the formation of a civilian army for the purpose of land reclamation. Fifteen days later, he told Congress that even more important than forestry, soil conservation, and flood control would be the “moral and spiritual value of such work” for the men who performed it. Four months after he entered office, about 275,000 young men and veterans had enlisted in the new civilian army. They quickly built thousands of camps of two hundred men each around the country and in the territories.

CCC Statue at Gambrill State Park
Frederick County, Maryland

CCC Cabin
Lost River State Park, West Virginia

 

Before its dissolution during World War II, about 3.5 million men passed through the CCC. The federal government paid them $30 a month (worth about $480 today), of which $25 was automatically routed to their families in order to buoy local economies in some of the country’s most distressed regions.

The CCC “boys” left a largely unseen legacy of vastly expanded and improved national, state, and regional parks; of lodges, bridges, roads, dams, trails, amphitheaters, and their signature fine stonework, much of which endures eighty years later. They planted entire forests now in their maturity. Instructors in the camps provided job training and educational opportunities upon which many of the men built careers. Veterans often remembered the CCC as salvational— and as the best years of their lives.

Bascom Lodge, 2006
Mount Greylock, Adams, Massachusetts  Source
Photo Credit: Ari Herzog CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

 

In today’s terms, the 3.5 billion trees the CCC planted sequestered millions of tons of carbon while conserving soil, water, and wildlife. At a time when climate change increasingly threatens life on the planet and so many young men and women have lost hope, we should remember who and what once worked. We have, after all, been drawing rich dividends on CCC labor ever since.

Gray Brechin, Ph.D. is Project Scholar for the Living New Deal.

DEP Deregulation, Streamlining, and Privatization of Background Checks Invited Abuse 

For Gov. Christie – a former US Attorney – to look the other way on mob influence on the NJ solid waste industry is an outrage

Our first priority is getting storm debris off our streets and out of our neighborhoods so the difficult road to recovery can get under way.”

“We are counting on full cooperation and compliance from everyone,” Commissioner Martin said. “Activities such as illegal dumping, hauling without proper approval, and price-gouging will not be tolerated, and will be prosecuted swiftly and to the fullest extent of the law.” ~~~ DEP Commisssioner Bob Martin (November 9, 2012)

In another Sandy AshBritt scandal bombshell, today’s Bergen Record reports that:

A convicted felon with an unregistered trucking company got $250,000 to haul Sandy storm debris under a taxpayer-funded contract, records show.

The state agency that regulates solid waste transporters — and is charged with keeping criminals out of the industry — said it has no record of the hauler, which used another firm’s paperwork to access restricted dump sites, officials said.

What the otherwise excellent Record story doesn’t get quite right is that this abuse is a predicted and direct result of specific actions DEP Commissioner Martin took to “streamline” Sandy debris removal.

Martin sought to deregulate Sandy response actions, and in the wake of Sandy he issued Administrative Orders and Guidance documents that deregulated and privatized the specific DEP regulatory reviews that should have blocked this abuse from happening, see these DEP documents:

CHRISTIE ADMINISTRATION WORKING WITH STORM-AFFECTED COUNTIES TO ENSURE SAFE AND ENVIRONMENTALLY RESPONSIBLE DEBRIS REMOVAL

Sandy Debris Management

Temporary Approved Transporters

Commissioner Martin made deregulation even worse, as the Record story notes, because the AshBritt contract delegated the A901 regulatory review DEP should have done to AshBritt, essentially privatizing regulation.

Specifically, the AshBritt contract made AshBritt responsible for verifying that all subcontractors had A901 approvals.

Ironically, AshBritt’s lawyers correctly criticize DEP for this.

Screening subcontractors for compliance with the law is DEP’s responsibility and DEP’s job – not a private company’s:

The Record’s review, though, raises new questions about how carefully the firm screened its more than 100 subcontractors — the haulers and heavy equipment operators who are in line for tens of millions in federal disaster recovery money. And it shows the limitations of decades-old state regulations that are meant to keep criminals out of the solid waste hauling business.

Jared Moskowitz, an AshBritt spokes­man, acknowledged that the company failed to confirm that Ace Materials was a properly registered business. But he also faulted state regulators at the Department of Environmental Protection to whom AshBritt reported all its subcontractors.

When politicians and incompetent hacks like DEP Commissioner Martin deregulate and privatize essential government functions, abuses like the AshBritt contract are what happens.

We have been saying this for months, and even wrote a warning letter to EPA Regional Administrator Enck and the NJ Senate Democratic leadership on November 6, 2012 (letter available upon request).

There needs to be a full investigation of not only the AshBritt contract – which is the tip of a huge iceberg of incompetence, mismanagement, reckless decisions, ignored warnings, and poor policy – but the State’s preparation, planning and response to the Sandy disaster.

Here’s a start for that:

The Deafness Before the Storm 

Leadership Matters – How DEP Buried Reports on Coastal Storm Risks

Catastrophic Failures and Catastrophic Fools 

[Update: In another “we told you so” file, in addition to the Nov. 6 EPA/Legislator oversight request letter and our own warning posts here, we note that we tried to flag the significance of this issue in a reader comment on the January 18, 2012 Star Ledger story that broke the AshBritt scandal: