HAZLET — As municipalities throughout Monmouth County work toward longrange flood mitigation strategies to protect against future storm events, residents still struggling to recover from Sandy are demanding answers.
Nearly 75 residents from Union Beach, Middletown, Keansburg and other Bayshore towns filled a movie theater in Hazlet on May 22 for a meeting on the countywide Hazard Mitigation Plan. Less than 20 minutes into the meeting, the crowd changed the topic of conversation.
“Some of our neighbors are up in the air. Like, 10, 12 feet up in the air,” said Sherrie Jarius, a storm-impacted Port Monmouth resident.
“This is a little ridiculous, and I’m concerned that these people are not only doing this out of sheer fear, but because no one is telling them what to do and what they should be waiting for. They are doing this with their own money.”
The meeting, which was held two days before the state began accepting applications for the federal Hazard Mitigation Grant funds, became a communal discussion on the problems and obstacles residents are facing more than 200 days after the superstorm.
Emergency management officials from Monmouth County, Union Beach, Atlantic Highlands, Aberdeen, Hazlet, Middletown, Keansburg, Holmdel, Keyport and Matawan attended the meeting — some of whom attempted to provide answers.
“I know exactly what you’re saying,” said Union Beach Emergency Management Coordinator (OEM) Michael Harriot, who chaired the meeting.
“I’m the guy who is sitting out there at 3 [a.m.], making the decision whether to take you out of your bed or not. I don’t want to make that phone call to you anymore.”
Last updated in 2009, the county mitigation plan must be updated every five years. Participating towns submit lists of individual needs and necessary mitigation projects to the county, whose emergency officials collate them and present a unified plan to the state.
Before the plan is finalized in early 2014, municipal and county officials are hosting multiple public meetings to seek input from residents, attempting to identify which areas of which towns need additional protection from flooding, fire, blizzards or other natural disasters.
However, the grant process is competitive, as only some of the work listed in Monmouth County’s plan has been funded by FEMA since 2009.
The remaining projects, such as some substantial flood control initiatives slated to be performed by the Army Corps of Engineers in Middletown and Union Beach, have yet to be completed.
“If that action had taken place in 2000 — like it was planned — none of this would have happened to Union Beach,” said Union Beach resident Carol Trigg, referring to an Army Corps floodgate project that was first initiated more than 10 years ago.
“The houses would all still be standing.”
Harriot said the Union Beach flood control project, akin to one that has been pending in Port Monmouth for a similar amount of time, is beyond the means of the borough.
“That’s a $138 million project. The borough of Union Beach could never afford to take that on,” he said. “All of the legwork was done, all the engineering was done, everything was done. The president failed to fund the project. Without funding, you have no project.”
Though the borough has been assured that the project will now be fully funded out of the multibillion-dollar Congressional Sandy aid bill,
Harriot said it would take years to complete. Additional mitigation projects, such as beach replenishment and the creation of new berms in towns such as Keansburg, are slated to begin later this summer, according to one municipal engineer.
But residents said they are afraid to rebuild homes that will still be vulnerable to future flooding.
“I did all the work on my house and I’m saying, ‘For what?’ ” a Union Beach resident said. “Because if we have another storm, there is no protection for me.”
Others said they were frustrated with continually changing and overly complicated information, such as FEMA’s flood elevation maps. After releasing advisory maps early this year, the agency plans on providing updated maps in August.
“It’s been said that those maps will not be as severe,” T&M Associates engineer Lori Thompson said.
Further complicating the issue, federal mitigation grants are not reimbursable, meaning that homeowners who elevate their houses prior to applying for the funds will not be eligible to recoup their expenses.
“If you have the opportunity to wait until August, you have the availability of more money,” Thompson said. “Plus you have the base flood elevations available at that time, and you can make an informed decision.”
However, a number of residents said they were tired of waiting.
“You’re already paying the mortgage, whether you’re living in the house or not,” one Union Beach woman said. “And you’re paying rent wherever you live. How long do they expect us to keep that up?”
Other concerns included the new elevations themselves, which in some instances will require seniors and parents with young children to climb 12 feet of stairs, and other federal mitigation programs — such as buyouts — that seem to have as many negative impacts as positive ones.
“The more they buyout in a town, the less tax ratables each town has,” Middletown OEM Coordinator Charlie Rogers said. “Every town that has had major losses wants to get everybody back, or you’re not going to have a tax base. You just can’t survive that way.”
In the end, towns can only provide as much information as they can to residents while working to protect their communities and navigate the myriad bureaucratic hurdles that accompany federal funding, he said.
“We go to an awful lot of meetings. We walk in there, people tell us a lot of things, and by the time we’re walking out the door, they are telling us something else,” he said.
“It’s difficult for us to face a crowd and say, ‘You are going to get this, you are going to get that.’ If I told you that tonight, by the time we walk out the door, somebody will change the program. You need to file for everything you can.”