Residents survey damage to townhomes in Union Beach from the superstorm. The Bayshore Regional Watershed Council will advise local communities how to rebuild according to standards that will make towns safer and more sustainable. ERIC SUCAR staff KEYPORT — A local environmental group is shifting focus and will take on an advisory role in Bayshore communities impacted by superstorm Sandy to ensure they are rebuilt in a sustainable way.
“We are going to increase volunteer efforts, serve as an advisory role to communities, and watch out for development,” said Joseph Reynolds, co-chair of the Bayshore Regional Watershed Council.
“There really hasn’t been anyone focusing on the Bayshore itself and I really think that we need to have a voice out there stating what we need to do.”
The Bayshore Regional Watershed Council is an all-volunteer environmental group of citizens, scientists and policy makers from Monmouth and Middlesex communities along the Raritan Bay and Sandy Hook Bay.
The Bayshore communities of Union Beach, Keyport, Keansburg, Cliffwood Beach and Highlands were hard hit by the Oct. 29 superstorm, leaving many residents displaced.
According to Reynolds, almost half of the residents in these towns are not likely to return, which will present an opportunity for developers to buy their properties.
“If people don’t come back, you are going to have large areas of land that are empty and you are going to have large-scale developers that are going to come in and take over those properties and then redevelop them. That is going to destroy the character of those towns,” Reynolds said at the Jan. 10 meeting of the Keyport-based group.
“We want to make sure that the towns strengthen their environmental rules so that developers don’t come and change that character.”
He said that as intense storms are likely to become more frequent, coastal communities need to be rebuilt in a way that will make them safer, sustainable and more resilient.
“Maybe it won’t be a superstorm but we are going to get storms that are similar, and we need to think about what we can do to make these communities sustainable,” Reynolds said.
“We want to make sure that communities don’t rebuild the same way. We want to make safer communities, more resilient communities, sustainable communities.”
He added that local protective natural resources have been degraded or ignored and must be restored.
This includes restoring wetlands, protecting floodplains, increasing the width of beaches, building higher dunes and vegetating them with native plants, and increasing oyster-reef restoration projects.
According to the Bayshore Regional Watershed Council website, coastal wetlands, which are a significant part of the Bayshore, function as a barrier to storms, rising seawaters, and flooding due to runoff, and can prevent erosion.
The website states that when there is excessive rain, for example, wetlands work like a sponge to absorb the surplus water and release it slowly, thus reducing the potential for flooding.
When wetlands are destroyed by development, runoff has no place to go and can cause dangerous, destructive flooding.
Members of the council said state and local governments need to work together to identify properties most at risk from floodwaters and revert those properties back to a natural state.
“There were pre-existing wetlands that were filled in years ago. They should be returned to pre-existing conditions,” said council member Bill Shewan of Hazlet.
“Buy back different properties — and it doesn’t have to be over the top. You can be selective. There are certain areas that prior to the storm were flooding anyway.”
Oyster reefs are also a natural safeguard system. The reefs are sustainable and can be integrated into current artificial buffer systems to protect coastlines during hurricanes and nor’easters, according to Reynolds.
“Oyster reefs not only help absorb some of the wave action but they help to clean up our waters too,” he said.
The environmental group is asking for local municipalities to strengthen zoning ordinances to reduce impervious surfaces and improve water-management systems to reduce flooding.
Members of the council also said electrical power systems, sewage-treatment pump stations and other infrastructure have to be improved to deal with sea level rise and stronger winds.
“We need to update building codes because the old-fashioned building codes are not going to work now,” said council member
Bart Sutton of Keyport. “Every town needs to review them and update them.”
The mission of the Bayshore Regional Watershed Council is to restore and protect all of the waterways throughout the Bayshore region.
The group, founded in 2000, focuses on educating the public, advocating for pro-environment legislation, encouraging participation and volunteerism, and enjoying the beauty of the Bayshore watershed.
To learn more about the council, visit www.restoreourbay.org.