Mulshine Whines About Christie Lies On Sandy and Dunes

Gov. Christie’s Entire Coastal Redevelopment Strategy Is A Disaster for NJ

Star Ledger “conservative” columnist Paul Mulshine is running a rant today on Governor Christie’s lies about dunes, see:

• Confrontation with reality: There’s not a grain of truth in Christie’s Sandy story

And I must say, I got a chuckle out of this line:

Getting confrontational with a family that used to let Alexander Hamilton crash at their crib is not exactly the way to ingratiate yourself with the old-money crowd.

But, as is typical of Mulshine, he confronts a tiny reality and gets a small part of the story right, but for the wrong reasons.

Christie is lying about his entire coastal redevelopment strategy.

The “dunes” he touts are not real “dunes” – they are piles of sand. Big difference.

The “dunes” he touts will do nothing to protect back bay homes from flooding.

He is recklessly promoting rebuild and redevelopment in flood hazard areas

The base flood elevations and technical standards in his rebuild program do not comport with minimum FEMA requirements and do not consider sea level rise or climate change risks.

The beach replenishment projects Christie touts are a costly waste of money.  NJ taxpayers will have to pick up significant long run maintenance costs.

Both beach replenishment and dunes create a false sense of security and invite even more development to dangerous locations.

The “hard” structures Christie supports (sea walls, et al) are failed strategy and make erosion problems worse.

Christie’s DEP is supporting the US Army Corps’ program to dispose of contaminated dredge sediments on our beaches and wetlands.

This disposal operation is done to appease and subsidize marinas and wealthy boat owners (the Corps project is the old inland canal dredge program that was blocked by lack of funds and public opposition to disposal of dredge spoils.)

Christie bought off the coastal environmentalists with $1 million to ALS and more on restoration of shore bird habitat, so they will not criticize all this foolishness

The decision to spend $250 million to rebuild Rt. 35 on a highly vulnerable barrier island (“protected” by a new $40 million steel sea wall) and god knows how much more to rebuild the Mantoloking bridge were huge boondoggles that will be underwater in 20 years.

There is no land use planning informing the redevelopment scheme.

It is all fueled by federal funding – what former DEP Commissioner Mark Mauriello said is correct, NJ is “drunk on federal funds”.

Christie weakened CAFRA coastal zone development regulations.

Christie ignored prior DEP work on coastal vulnerability assessment and adaptation to sea level rise and climate change.

Christie opposed legislation to create a coastal commission to do this planning work.

His policy is a disaster for NJ.

Christie lies about the whole thing.

[Update: – Star Ledger does more of their Christie coastal cheerleading with this one, which was just posted this afternoon and almost seems designed to rebut the back bay “Achilles heel” argument.  ~~~ end update]