By Philip Sean Curran
Residents of Monmouth County will get to weigh in later this month on a federal government study looking at ways to “manage” flood risk in New Jersey and New York, two states that experienced significant damage during Super Storm Sandy more than six years ago.
In February, the Army Corps of Engineers released a 136-page interim report for its New York-New Jersey Harbor and Tributaries Coastal Storm Risk Management Feasibility Study. An option being considered is “a combination levee, berm and surge gate/barrier system” from Sandy Hook to Breezy Point, in Queens, New York, along with having a “similar surge barrier enclosure along the East River … ,” the report said in part. Another element would be to put surge gates and other measures in New York’s Pelham Bay.
Overall, that project would take 25 years to build and cost around $119 billion.
“We are still very early in the process of this study, which is not expected to conclude until 2022,” said Michael T. Embrich, a spokesman for the Army Corps of Engineers, in an email. “Ultimately, after an internal governmental process, Congress makes the final decision on any project the Corps would build.”
The federal government would contribute 65 percent of the cost of any project, with the rest picked up by a “non-federal sponsor,” he said.
Part of the process is to hear from the public. Meetings have been scheduled in both states, in March and April, to give the community a chance to weigh in.
The first meeting in New Jersey is scheduled to start at 5 p.m. March 27 in the Middletown Arts Center, 36 Church St. A presentation by the study team will be held from 5:30 to 6 p.m. Audience question and answer session will be from 6 to 7 p.m.
This year will mark the seventh anniversary of Sandy, what the Army Corps of Engineers called “the largest storm of its kind to hit the U.S. East Coast.”
“Devastation in the wake of Hurricane Sandy revealed a need to address the vulnerability of populations, infrastructure and resources at risk throughout the North Atlantic coastal region,” the report read in part.
Monmouth County Freeholder Gerry P. Scharfenberger said natural dunes “were the most effective in keeping the floodwaters out of north Middletown.”
“I would hope that would be a consideration, where we’d use sort of natural barriers like that as a means of flood control and flood prevention,” he said.
“No decision has been made about what features or measures could be recommended,” Embrich said. “All or none of the proposed measures could be considered environmentally acceptable, or economically feasible.”
