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| English: The Great Dune of Pyla, France, the tallest sand dune in Europe, being 107 m high at its crest. Français: La dune du Pyla, vue d'une partie de la crête côté terre en direction du nord-est. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
The Final Battle?
It seems the final act of the 13 yr. Absecon Island Dune battle is finally drawing near. You can read all about it in todays AC Press
http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/news/press/atlantic/margate-may-be-forced-to-put-dune-project-to-referendum/article_4fd1134c-aeae-5a95-8b1b-2d2d25682514.html By the way I even have the final word in that article so take a moment and check it out.
Why am I Neutral after all these Yrs. of Strident opposition?
I think I can sum up my neutral position with two words. SEA RISE. You might be wondering why I haven't gone over totally to the Dune advocate side then. That would be a fair question at this juncture, especially considering my vigorous opposition to Beach replenishment in general these last 13 years.
Ok, so here's my position today and why it's changed.
Global Sea Rise & Meltwater Pulse 1A & 1B
Over the course of the last couple of years I've spent a lot of time studying the increasingly alarming science, news and related events of Global warming and climate change. In among all that information was a lot of data that suggested that sea rise was increasing rapidly. Up until recently however, although I knew this, I really didn't understand it within any historical framework, I do now and frankly folks, I'm alarmed. Very recently my local chapter of the Int'l Envirnomental group SJ350.org had Mr. John Englander come and do a lecture and a power pt. demonstration for us at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation out in Galloway TWP. behind Stockton College. Mr. Englander has written a wonderful small book on Global Sea rise called "High Tide on Mainstreet" and I implore any of you that are interested in knowing more about Global warming and Sea rise to get it. You can buy it I believe @ Amazon.com. In that book, John who is a lifelong Oceanographer and is well known in the world of Oceanography and related studies, outlines for us the history of sea rise since the end of the last Ice age and it's quite an eye opener indeed. I won't be giving anything away to mention one startling fact here, over the course of the last 18 thousand yrs. since the end of the last great Ice age the Oceans of Earth have risen over 400 ft.! That is amazing in of itself, but here's the really startling facts of that rise in a few very short time frames of under 300 yrs. & 500 yrs. twice in that long rise the Oceans rose in two enormous pulses, called Melt Water pulse 1A and 1B. 1A happened about 14K yrs. ago and went on for about 200 yrs. In that short span of time the Oceans rose 65 ft! In the second great Meltwater pulse around 10K years ago it rose again about 50 ft. in less than 500 yrs.! Why? It's thought that both of these events coincided with the collapse of large sections of the great glacial ice caps that stretched across North America and EurAsia and the massive Ice cap that covered Antarctica and the surround sea basins like the Ross sea. As parts of these Ice caps melted and collapsed they sent huge amounts of fresh water cascading seaward in a relatively short amount of time geologically speaking. The seas rose at the rate of 3.25 ft. a decade in Melt water 1A and about 1.5 ft. a decade in Meltwater 1B. Doesn't sound like a lot right? Guess again. I want you to focus on the second figure and then you'll get an idea of why I'm alarmed. 1.5 ft. a decade is approx. 30 mm and today as I write this the sea rise rate is 3 mm a yr. X 10 yrs = 30 mm! That's right, as of today we are in Melt Water Pulse 2A folks and the rate of sea rise is still rising!
New Jerseyization Indeed!
Again, some historical perspective is needed to frame just how fast and just how high things are going to go in the 21st century, yes in our kids lifetimes. Sea rise started again in the early 20th century after almost little to no rise for the previous 6 thousand yrs.! Still it only rose that whole century by about 1.5 ft to 2 feet worldwide with most of that happening in the last 30 yrs. of the century as the rate started to increase rapidly. Nevertheless, if one starts to look at what happened along just the NJ coast from say 1910 on you can already start to see it's effects. How? The 1st beach replenishment project was in Coney Island in the early 20's and by decades end Atlantic City was also getting it's first beach fill along with increasing amounts of large groins, jetties , seawalls and bulkheading. Cape May lost it's large 19th century beaches and had to build a huge sea wall to protect it's stately Victorian houses by the 1940's. The hard reinforcing of almost all of the NJ coast over the next 80's yrs. was so dramatic that coastal geologists even coined a phrase they used globally to describe this kind of effort, to as they called it back them combat coastal erosion, it was called New Jerseyization. In reality, what we were already seeing in retrospect was the first battles being waged against a rising Ocean caused by the oceans starting to expand as they absorbed the first pulses of heat from Global warming. Some scientists now believe one of the warmings first effects was ending the so called "little Ice age" in Europe and North America by the 1850's. Remember, Industrialization had started at that pt. 100 yrs. earlier and with it the massive burning of coal and eventually oil by the 20th century. All of this greatly accelerated as we neared the 21st century and is still accelerating even today! What nobody even suspected till lately was how sensitive the whole climate system was to the level of GHGs in it.
180 ppm to 280 ppm of C02 for 600K yrs!
For 600K yrs. the average range of CO2 in the atmosphere is believed to have been roughly only 100 ppm from the depth of an Ice age to the peak of an Inter-glacial warming period like today. In a few short pulses it might have reached 300 ppm in a few Interglacials, but that is even still not a certainty. Today as I write this the amount of CO2 is passing the 400 ppm mark! Understand, Sea rise is directly correlated to and lags behind the amount of C02 and the average temp. rises associated with it. Not to scare all of you, but here's a reality we all need to start to grasp. The last time C02 on Earth was above 400 ppm was 5 mil. yrs. ago in the Pliocene epic and @ that time the Ocean was 100 to 130 ft. higher than today! Get the picture?
DUNES then and Now
So, as the sea rises in this century we are going to witness and then our kids and grandkids are going to witness the next great round of defensive coastal engineering in a increasingly desperate attempt to try and adapt to the oncoming and accelerating sea rise as the warming ramps up. What will it look like? The 1st part started @ the end of the 20th century, as the Feds. started to massively replenish beaches and build artificial dunes / levees all along the coasts, not just in NJ. These programs, now over 500 of them I'm told are absorbing billions of tax dollars in essentially a rear guard action against a rising Ocean that is now accelerating exponentially.
RAISE EM UP & THEY SHALL COME
The next act in this unfolding drama will be an attempt to keep ahead of rising sea levels and it's attendant storm flooding is already happening, as whole islands are gradually going to be re-zoned as well as the surrounding low lying areas along the mainland. New building elevation standards will be introduced and some people will either raise their homes or lose them to banks and mortgage companies. Many others will tear them down and rebuild higher and bigger. Federal flood Ins. rates are going up as we all know and without flood Ins. many banks will not lend to someone to build , so the composition of who will be living at the beach is also going to shift back to toward the wealthy as time goes on.( they can afford to self insure.) The age of the a massive middle class coastal building boom has come to a sinking end. ( post H. Sandy)
60 Yrs. from Now
In the year, 2083 barring a repeat of Melt Water 1A, what will it look like along the So. Jersey coastal region in that period? At the present rates of sea rise and added to it of land subsidence ( sinking 2 mm a yr.) all of the present barrier Islands and beaches will have narrowed considerably. It's impossible to say how much they'll narrow right now because there are just too many variables and ongoing beach replenishment is just one of them. I would garner a guess that at some pt. up ahead as the noted NJ Coastal Geologist Norbert Psuty has said on many occasions, "either the money or the beach quality sand or both are going to run out and at that pt. these projects will end." When that happens those beaches ( the artificially maintained ones) will erode away quickly and then the reckoning will begin. Before, then however, the ocean will assault all these places from the bay sides as we witnessed in Hurricane Sandy and many other large storms before her. The barrier Islands and barrier beaches will be slowly abandoned from the bay side first ( ex. Ventnor hts. , Venice Park & along the bay fronts) then the Inlet areas ( like Longport's pt. & AC's inlet ) and eventually and lastly along the beaches. If human nature is any guide by mid-22nd century a few very wealthy people will be left out here, having bought up what remains. By the late 22nd none of them will exist anymore, unless they have been filled and elevated artificially like was done to Galveston, Texas in 1900 after the infamous hurricane of that yr. that killed over 10K people in the worst single disaster in non-Native American history. The cost would be astronomical by then, but you never know some mega- gazillionaire of that era might be able to afford it, so I won't rule that possibility out totally. Even then it would be probably to build a private Island or an exclusive resort.
NEUTRAL kind of
So, that's why I will no longer stand in opposition to any of these projects going forward, at least not as they are presently funded. I would be hard against them once again and stridently so, if the funding formulas flip flopped and local taxpayers had to then bear most of the burden of the endless refills needed to maintain and rebuild them every so many yrs. By the way that would include us having to pick up the huge bill to build a behind the project drainage system and ocean outfalls as was mandated in 2000's Margate project plans. That said, I'm also still not very pleased with the one size all model the State and the Feds. try to apply to every community. As I have endlessly reiterated here for almost a decade now the one size all model effectively has destroyed Atlantic City's boardwalk based economy and with the decline of the Casino industry since the onset of the great Recession we now have very little left to offer our visitors. Adjustments have to made for the commercial realities along the coast even if it adds some risk to these structures. Damaged boardwalks can be fixed and replaced , but boardwalks that don't provide the basics of some kind of view and sea breeze are almost worthless economically. They don't and will never attract large crowds again under such circumstances as exist today in AC. Why bother advertising them, frankly as they presently are constituted they're more of an embarrassment then an attraction.
THE TRADE OFFS & CAVEATS YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT
In Margate beachfront homeowners must expect to lose some of their view as a trade off for whatever amount of storm surge protection a Project dune will provide ( atleast as long as it can be maintained that is.) The residents of Margate must also be prepared to have to walk over these structures as they have to do in AC and Ventnor and they also must be prepared for the possible loss of some beach width in front of the dune line. Why is that you might wonder? Because , ironically under certain circumstances the dune itself will actually increase the amount of beach erosion in front of it. As long as the beach in front of these things is refilled though this usually isn't a problem. The voters and residents in Margate must also realize refilling and repairing their project is NOT a guaranteed thing. It's based on whether Congress provides earmarked funding and if the Army decides you need repair and refill. ( the city doesn't get to decide this.) So, don't vote for this based on some mistaken assumption once you sign on they will always be here every 3 yrs. to refill and repair it, they won't. Remember, they didn't return to AC after doing the initial fill in 2003 for nearly 7 yrs!. Also, remember this, that Cong. Lobiondo is not always going to be the chairperson of the Cong. committee that provides the funding for these projects. When and if the day comes and it will that he dies or retires or if the Dems. regain control of Congress as they did in 2004 we could and probably will lose our funding again. So, weigh all these facts carefully folks because once your in this thing it's hard getting out even if you want to. Oh, and one more rather counter intuitive thing before I move on here. Once you sign on to an Army Corp / NJDEP beach project you LOSE your FEMA emergency funding for your beach. Understand, what that might mean. Here's an example, if another Sandy like Hurricane hits us a yr. after we join the Project and it wipes out our dune system and completely erodes our beach while at it, we will not be eligible for emergency FEMA money to repair the beach and dune system. Plus, the Army / NJDEP might then refer us to our contract and refuse to repair or refill anything unless WE fund it locally! It's happened just this way south of us in Sea Isle and Avalon check it out. In those towns the local taxpayers were put on the hook for millions to repair storm damaged beaches between Army scheduled refills.
COME THE REFERENDUM IN MARGATE
If and when Margate decides to hold a citywide referendum on whether to join the AISPP I will be neutral on this vote. I will however, try to supply as much relevant information as possible so the voters can make up their minds on this proposed city wide change. I'm proud now that 13 yrs. ago I was part of an effort to allow the voters to ultimately decide this issue. It's one of those kinds of changes that should be decided by the residents and I'd even say in all fairness the taxpayers as well. So, my recommendation if possible would be for Margate to hold a non-binding referendum which would allow both residents and taxpayers to vote and that the results would then be used as a super poll for the City Commission to base it's actions on. If that is not a legal possibility then I would recommend a standard resident voter ballot only. In any event, I believe the people should decide this, not one or two Commissioners. (they should remember they were not elected on any decisions related to the Beach.) Margate is also NOT Longport which has a few hundred year round residents so it's NOT a good example to follow. We should follow Ventnor's example as ugly and contentious as it was back then. At least in retrospect, in Ventnor the community decided the way forward on this issue and today Margate's residents deserve nothing less.