Flood gates are dropped from a plan to protect the Jersey Shore’s back bays from catastrophic storms

The federal government has dropped huge gates at the mouths of three inlets, as well as internal waterway barriers from a plan to protect New Jersey’s back bays from the type of catastrophic flooding they endured during Superstorm Sandy.

Instead, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in a plan released Friday wants to rely more on elevating thousands of homes, hardening police and fire stations, hospitals and critical infrastructure, and restoring salt marshes to act as natural sponges capable of absorbing floodwaters during severe storms.

The changes would reduce the cost of the plan from $16 billion to $7.6 billion, and remove a major point of contention raised by homeowners, environmentalists and some local governments concerned about damage to the views of inlets and bays, potential harm to fish and wildlife, and the cost of maintaining the massive projects, which local governments would have to pay.

But the scaled-down project would be less effective, the Army Corps acknowledged.

“The storm surge barrier analyses remains valuable, and can be revisited at a future phase, but they ultimately required years of engineering work and environmental coordination, and we wanted to release a plan with elements that could be move forward in the near term,” said Stephen Rochette, a spokesman for the Army Corps.

Without some sort of storm protection plan, New Jersey’s back bay regions could sustain $2.6 billion a year in flood-related damage to property, infrastructure and vehicles each year between 2040 and 2090, the Corps projected. The study covered the area from Neptune in Monmouth County all the way to the state’s southern tip in Cape May.

The original recommendation called for large storm gates across the Manasquan, Barnegat and Great Egg Harbor inlets. In addition, so-called “cross-bay barriers” would have been erected in Absecon Bay near Atlantic City, and along a former railroad right of way along 52nd Street in Ocean City.

These bay barriers would have had a swing gate in the middle that could be shut during major storms, and slat-like gates spanning about a third of a mile that would be lowered down into the water to block surges of water during storms. The structures would have risen about 20 feet (about 6.1 meters) over the water.

The storm gates plan would have been one of the most ambitious and costly efforts any U.S. state has yet taken to address back bay flooding. This refers to floods that are not primarily caused by waves crashing over ocean barriers, but by stealthily rising water levels in bays along inland shorelines.

Although ocean waves caused severe damage during Superstorm Sandy in 2012, back bay flooding also caused extensive damage in that storm. In numerous places, it was the primary source of property damage during Sandy.

“The overwhelming cost probably had a lot to do with it,” said Tim Dillingham, executive director of the American Littoral Society. “There’s a growing awareness on the part of local officials that the maintenance of these projects falls to them. Maintaining miles of dikes and thousands of feet of gates is very expensive.”

But there are also environmental benefits to eliminating the barriers, Dillingham said, adding they would have interfered with water circulation in the shallow bays, potentially harming fish and wildlife.

The new plan calls for elevating 6,421 homes by installing pilings underneath them. That figure is down from 19,000 in the original plan. Not all details are spelled out, but participants in an elevation plan would have to sign numerous permission forms to have their homes included in the government-funded work.

It envisions flood-proofing 279 critical infrastructure facilities such as police, fire and ambulance stations and hospitals.

And it calls for using material dredged from the bottom of waterways to restore 217 acres (88 hectares) of salt marshes in seven locations deemed particularly vulnerable to sea level rise. These marshes would act as natural sponges capable of absorbing some of the floodwaters during severe storms.

The latest version of the plan must still be finalized by the Army Corps, and Congress needs to approve funding for the work, which could take 11 years to complete.

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