Commentary on the economic , geopolitical and simply fascinating things going on. Served occasionally with a side of snark.
Saturday, October 26, 2013
Stronger than the Storm ? Examining the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy , after the politicians move on to other sound bites ( the shattered lives still remain ) - battling insurance companies and government agencies , economic disparity means the storm is still impacting many every day as some Americans remain trapped in homes that still aren't repaired , while other forgotten Americans helplessly live in makeshift hotel housing which barely rises above a squatter's life. Isn't it time for an accounting on where the 50 billion dollars went - especially considering these reports on unfinished work and unfinished lives ?
Olivia DeCellio in her Highlands, N.J. home, October 14, 2013. Andrew Lichtenstein for Al Jazeera America
HIGHLANDS, N.J. — Not much has changed on Gravelly Point Road in nearly a year.
The stone gate with a sign reading “Private property — 5 mph” is intact. The beach, which looks out onto Sandy Hook Bay, is tranquil. The SeaStreak ferry still departs for Manhattan’s Wall Street daily. And Olivia DeCellio’s one-story home, painted cream on the outside, is still gutted on the inside.
At the home where she had planned to retire this year, her floors are still stripped, her walls are still devoid of any paint or personal touches, and her door is still hanging on by a hinge. A few pieces of new drywall lean against bare wood beams where the living room used to be.
And not much has changed for DeCellio, either. She still spends hours on the phone each afternoon with insurance companies and representatives from the state of New Jersey, trying to convince them she needs more money to rebuild.
DeCellio isn’t alone in her stasis. She and thousands of others across the Northeast spend their days much the same way they did right after Superstorm Sandy ravaged communities one year ago — in disarray and desperation, trying to regain a sense of normality.
On Monday, Oct. 29, 2012, Superstorm Sandy made landfall in New Jersey and New York, swelling oceans and rivers until water had no choice but to flood land. The water crossed every barrier, and its effects knew no class. Immigrant communities from places such as Brighton Beach and Canarsie in Brooklyn were hit hard, but so were residents in some of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the world, like Tribeca and SoHo in Manhattan.
The electrical grid went down in several places, and for a few weeks much of the Northeast was united by darkness.
But unity was not a characteristic of the storm’s aftermath.
For many people who didn’t have tens of thousands of dollars sitting in their bank accounts in case of disaster, the effects of Superstorm Sandy are lingering. When the water finally receded, it revealed a case study in how close to the edge of destruction many Americans are. For people living paycheck to paycheck, Sandy proved that one flooded apartment or business could lead to months of misery.
From the Jersey Shore to eastern Staten Island to the Rockaways in Queens, people are still struggling to gain back things they never thought they’d have to worry about losing — a daily routine, a livelihood, a home.
On Jan. 29, President Barack Obama signed a bill that gave states affected by Sandy over $50 billion to recover. But it’s unclear where all that money went.
Some say if it had been spent effectively and transparently, people who needed to rely on the government to rebuild their lives would have rebuilt them by now. DeCellio might not be postponing retirement, businesses in Staten Island would be thriving once again, and 300 residents of the Rockaways and other coastal areas in Brooklyn would be living in homes, not in hotels as they are now.
Instead, thousands are stuck waiting for slow-moving government agencies and nonprofits to decide their futures.
Pain still present
In places like New Dorp Lane on the eastern shore of Staten Island, there’s not much destruction to be found. Construction crews have cleaned up and left. But beyond the veneer of a return to normality, pain from Sandy still reigns.
It’s present in the bank accounts of people like Dominick Griffo, who owns Griff’s Place, a sports bar on the island. It’s thriving, but Griffo is deep in debt after insurance covered just a fraction of the storm-related repairs the bar needed.
The pain is present inside the walls of housing projects in New Jersey, where residents are suing Gov. Chris Christie’s administration to find out why they were rejected for state funds to rebuild.
And it’s present in places that Sandy barely touched, including the Kings Hotel in a section of Brooklyn that’s about as far from the shore as one can get in New York City.
That’s where a dozen or so families who lost their homes during Sandy are still living, waiting on money to find permanent housing. The families at the Kings Hotel were placed there by the city, along with 300 other families who were placed in hotels across the five boroughs.
In late September, nearly 11 months after Sandy hit, New York City’s Office of Housing Recovery Operations announced it would stop paying for the hotel rooms. The city said that after spending $73 million on the program, funds had run out.
The Red Cross and other charities immediately stepped in with more than $1 million, but they left the residents of the Kings Hotel out of that plan because they said many of the families staying there did not have concrete plans to find permanent housing, according to Peter Gudaitis of New York Disaster Interfaith Services.
Now the residents of the Kings Hotel are effectively squatting, in rooms that have no televisions, couches, refrigerators or stoves.
The Office of Housing Recovery Operations did not return calls but sent an email statement that read, in part, “Interim housing, along with intensive case management services, was provided but was never intended to be a permanent solution.”
Wanda Wilson, who has lived at the Kings Hotel since June, never intended for her current situation to be permanent either.
“I've been fighting ever since I got here to get out,” she said. “I feel like we’re imprisoned.”
Cycle of frustration
Wanda Wilson in her Kings Hotel room. Katie Orlinsky for Al Jazeera America
Wilson, 29, was living in a first-floor apartment near the water in Brooklyn’s Coney Island when Sandy arrived.
When the storm water crept past her windowsill, she and her husband grabbed their two children and ran up to the second-floor hallway. They spent the night watching water overtake the first floor of the apartment building and destroy all their belongings, including the identification and paperwork Wilson would later realize she needed to get assistance from the city.
The storm also destroyed the day-care center where she worked, leaving her jobless.
Since then, she’s been living in different hotels with her 15-month-old son and 5-year-old daughter. In June she was transferred to the Kings Hotel, which is next to an overpass and adjacent to a shelter for mentally ill men who, Wilson said, harass hotel residents daily.
At the Kings Hotel, her family shares a carpeted room on the third floor with enough space for two full-size beds adorned with City of New York blankets and not much else. She spends her days filling out paperwork from nonprofits and city agencies, attempting to get money for an apartment.
Wilson, 29, was living in a first-floor apartment near the water in Brooklyn’s Coney Island when Sandy arrived.
When the storm water crept past Wilson’s windowsill, she and her husband grabbed their two children and ran up to the second floor hallway. They spent the night watching water overtake the first floor of the apartment building and destroy all of their belongings, including the identification and paperwork Wilson would later realize she needed to get assistance from the city.
The storm also destroyed the daycare center where Wilson worked, leaving her jobless.
Since then, she’s been living in different hotels with her 15-month-old son and 5-year-old daughter. In June, she was transferred to the Kings Hotel, which is next to an overpass and adjacent to a shelter for mentally ill men who, Wilson said, harass hotel residents on a daily basis.
At the Kings Hotel, Wilson’s family shares a carpeted room on the third floor with enough space for two full-size beds adorned with City of New York blankets, and not much else. She spends her days filling out paperwork from different nonprofits and city agencies, attempting to get money for an apartment.
In her free time, Wilson takes care of other families’ kids and argues with hotel management about her living conditions.
Residents and their lawyers say the management of the Kings Hotel has been actively hostile toward the Sandy victims. Residents have called the police multiple times, claiming the manager shuts off hallway lights and the elevator to save money.
Hotel owner William Boateng said the residents’ complaints are unfounded. He said the elevator and lights were shut off only once in mid-October in order to repair a generator. Several residents and a lawyer with the Legal Aid Society who has represented them said that’s not true.
Boateng says because the city stopped providing services and money for the people at the Kings Hotel, he’ll have to take them to court in order to get them to leave.
He says he understands the residents’ tough situation can’t keep the residents there without being paid.
The residents don’t like being there either. But now that the city has stopped funding the hotel program, they don’t have anywhere else to go.
They’re stuck in housing that no one will pay for, in legal limbo and without city services to provide them with necessities like food and security.
Residents used to get from the city cold meals of rice and chicken, which they could take turns heating in the hotel’s lone microwave.
Now they get nothing. Those who receive food stamps buy food. Those who don’t, buy little.
“We tried to share (our food), but it went quick,” Wilson said. “I have two kids, so I can only do so much.”
Looking forward
Nicole Adejumo in her room at the Kings Hotel. Katie Orlinsky for Al Jazeera America
Beyond the tangible limitations of life at the Kings Hotel, what many residents find hardest to do is stay positive.
Nicole Adejumo, 29, spends every day in her room, which is just slightly bigger than her bed, thinking about her old life. She used to run a hair salon in Canarsie, but Sandy destroyed it along with her apartment.
“I'm just so frustrated and tired,” she said. “I'm still trying to get assistance from FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency) and start back my business. Everyone says, ‘We'll call you back, we'll call you back.’”
The Kings Hotel doesn’t allow visitors, so Adejumo can’t see clients there. She has become depressed and anxious and has racked up credit card debt while waiting for assistance, making it impossible to get a loan to start another salon.
“I cry every day — there’s no doubt about it,” she said. “When are people going to stand up and say enough is enough? It’s like no one is human anymore.”
The situation that Adejumo and the other residents at the Kings Hotel face may be unique, but the circumstances that brought them there aren’t.
For Griffo, the owner of Griff’s Place, the struggle is evident every time he checks his bank statement.
Some 1,200 businesses on Staten Island were affected by Sandy, and some never reopened. Griffo received only $8,000 from his insurance plan and $1,500 from FEMA to replace roughly $100,000 in damaged floors, air-conditioning equipment and furniture.
He’s now tens of thousands of dollars in debt but thankful he’s alive.
Dominick Griffo behind the bar at Griffo's place. Andrew Lichtenstein for Al Jazeera America
“I’m still paying myself back for everything,” he said. “That’ll take years … But I’m very fortunate. Believe me, I’m not crying.” For Olivia DeCellio, the pain of Sandy is evident every time she thinks about retirement. She’s 67 and had planned to call it quits this year. Now she has to rebuild her home in order to pay back her mortgage.
New York and New Jersey received the vast majority of the $60 billion in federal aid allocated after Sandy, but homeowners like DeCellio are still fighting the state for a few thousand more dollars to rebuild.
Whenever she gets the money, she plans to rebuild her house, raised 10 feet above the ground in the same location. She’s building on Gravelly Point Road because the law requires her to. But she says even if it didn’t, she would.
“I've owned the house for 20 years. My roots are here now,” she said. “You’ve got to give this house another chance … I’ve got to try one more time.”
For Wanda Wilson, the pain brought on by Sandy is still evident every time she takes her daughter to school and returns to find the Kings Hotel’s doors locked without a security guard to let her in. It’s there when she hangs up the phone with her city-appointed case manager to find out she’ll have to wait just a few days more before the inspection on her new apartment is completed.
“We never lived like this,” Wilson said. “(My daughter) says, ‘Mommy, Mommy, I don’t like it. I don’t want to be here anymore.’ My son, he sleeps. That’s the best thing he can do. Maybe he'll wake up and things will be different.”
UNION BEACH, N.J. -- UNION BEACH, N.J. (AP) — Bart Sutton fought with his insurance company for a year over what it would cost to rebuild his flood-damaged home, then gave up in frustration and tore it down. A week later, the money came through.
Simone and Ken Dannecker fixed their flooded home themselves, deciding they couldn't wait for insurance and government aid as green mold threatened to overrun it. Now, with the work nearly done, they are all but bankrupt — and still can't afford to elevate the house they fought so hard to stay in.
Gigi Liaguno-Dorr needs $2 million to rebuild the bayfront restaurant that was one of the town's major employers; she has less than a quarter of that and says she has never felt so helpless.
For these three families in Union Beach, a blue-collar enclave clinging precariously to the Raritan Bay, full recovery from Superstorm Sandy is still elusive nearly a year after the storm pummeled the state Oct. 29. That's also true to thousands of others at the Jersey shore; in Ocean County alone, the county planning board estimated 26,000 people were unable to return to their homes as of last month.
Michael Drewniak, a spokesman for Gov. Chris Christie, could not estimate how many storm-damaged homes remain unoccupied. Many families are living elsewhere while their homes are being rebuilt, and "a large number" of bungalows and small homes that were destroyed or severely damaged were second homes for people living in their primary residences, he said. The state taxation division said more than 40,000 properties suffered a total of $4.3 billion in lost value from storm damage.
Joanne Gwin's home in Silverton section of Toms River was wrecked by the storm. Her insurance company paid $101,100 on a $250,000 policy, and she is appealing that decision, still living in a rental a year later.
"As of today, we are no closer to moving home than we were on Nov. 2, 2012," she said. "We are paying taxes and insurance on a home we can no longer live in. We are now at a standstill, waiting for the next step. What IS the next step? Does anybody know? We are looking at another Christmas with a tabletop tree in an apartment instead of the 9-foot Christmas tree that has always been our tradition. We want to go home."
To be sure, remarkable progress has been made in recovering from one of the worst storms ever to hit New Jersey and the second-costliest in the nation's history at $65 billion, trailing only Hurricane Katrina's $125 billion cost. Tens of millions of dollars have been spent rebuilding boardwalks and oceanfront attractions crucial to the tourist trade, and thousands of homes have been repaired, either with the help of government aid or through a mix of private insurance and savings.
As of Sept. 30, $5.6 billion in aid had been paid out to New Jersey storm victims, including $3.5 billion from the National Flood Insurance Program and $415 million in FEMA grants to individuals or households.
Sutton, who works for a regional sewerage authority, fought with his insurance company for nearly a year over the damage to his Union Beach home. Finally, he gave up in frustration and tore it down.
After inking a contract for nearly $10,000 to pay for the tear-down out of his pocket, Sutton and his wife, Sue, watched as heavy equipment smashed it to bits in less than 40 minutes. Sue fought back some tears but held it together as the house came apart.
"We cried for weeks," she said. "We dragged our entire life's possessions out onto the front lawn and cried as we watched it all get hauled away. After fighting with the insurance company for a year, this is actually progress. An empty lot gives us a place to start rebuilding our lives. A lot of the tears come when no one is around. This is actually a good day. We just want to go home."
A week after they tore the house down, the $68,000 over which Sutton had been battling, and which could have saved his home, was approved by the federal flood program. He'll use the money to help build a new home.
Not far away, the Danneckers fixed their flooded house themselves. Ken is a carpenter and realized mold was moving faster than the bureaucracy of insurance companies and government aid.
"Financially, we're in ruins," Simone Dannecker said. "We took everything we had in the bank and put it into our house."
She works part time at a bank and spends the equivalent of another part-time job dealing with paperwork for insurance and aid money she's hopeful will eventually arrive.
Doors are the dominant theme of Liaguno-Dorr's new restaurant, in rented space about a mile inland from the bayfront business that was annihilated by the storm. She salvaged dozens of doors from destroyed homes in Union Beach, restored them and marked each with the address where it once stood and uses them as wall space and tables for her new eatery.
It will cost $2 million to rebuild the restaurant — money she does not have. Business was depressingly slow over the summer.
"There's nobody here, nobody in this town," she said. "You drive around at night and it's dark. And so quiet!"
Dorr has yet to receive a penny in government assistance despite applying for several programs. She will soon be on her eighth adviser for just one particular grant application.
"I have never felt more helpless than I do right now," she said. "We're struggling. And I'm not alone. Everybody I know is like this."
One year after Hurricane Sandy, New Jersey's forgotten western shore struggles to rebuild
1 / 37
Hurricane Sandy damaged this home along New Jersey Avenue in the Bay Shore community of Fortescue in Cumberland County. Many homes are up for sale and businesses are struggling along New Jersey's "forgotten shore," one year after the monster storm struck. (Andre Malok/The Star-Ledger)
A smiling Gov. Chris Christie leaned across a broad blue banner imprinted with the words, “New Jersey, Stronger Than the Storm” and cut the ribbon on a brand new boardwalk in Belmar. “The biggest reason that I want to come and open these boardwalks,” he told the crowd in May, “is because I want New Jersey, the region and the country to know that New Jersey has come back.”
SANDY IMPACT MAP
Check our interactive map to view the areas of New Jersey's Bayshore region that were hit hardest by the storm. The map is viewable on desktop computers and mobile devices.
A hundred miles to the southwest, on the other side of the state, Mike Coombs crouched in the palomino-gold meadow grass. It was not going to be a good day for farming. His back ached from the shift in temperature. A brisk breeze from the west had turned east and would be bringing moisture in off the Delaware Bay, and a wet “medda,” as Mike called it in the faintly Southern twang of this part of New Jersey, meant he wouldn’t be cutting hay anytime soon. Three thousand acres of salt hay, and all but 500 were thrashed and drowned by last October’s storm. The surge from the Delaware Bay pushed mountains of water up the estuary’s tributaries, slashed levees, smashed through sand berms and flooded meadow and marsh; it tore through homes and businesses and shifted so much sand it clogged rivers, creeks and streams.
Hurricane Sandy aftermath: Commercial crabber in Bivalve suffers major lossesBob Bateman has experienced many struggles during the 40 plus years as a commercial fisherman in the Delaware Bay. But nothing like the impact felt from Hurricane Sandy last year. Bateman sets more than 200 crab traps in the Maurice River and Delaware Bay. When things are going well, he could see a harvest of 20-25 bushels per trip. This season, he's lucky to see 4 or 5. But certainly the worst event related to the storm came during March this year. Bob's nephew, 23 year old Josh Catlett, drowned when his boat capsized while dredging for crabs and conch in the Delaware Bay. The boat caught a snag, likely debris stirred up from the massive storm. Josh is considered by many, the last victim of Hurricane Sandy. (Video by Andre Malok/The Star-Ledger)
A year ago this week, Hurricane Sandy slammed into the Mid-Atlantic, and while much of the evidence has been razed and removed from gleamingly rebuilt towns all along the eastern shore, along the western shore it’s like Sandy never moved on at all. In the aftermath of the worst natural disaster in state history, two New Jerseys were left behind. The people of one coast reached for recovery. They were lauded for their stoutness, touted by politicians for their fortitude and inundated with gifts and money by a sympathetic public and a responsive state government. Shops, restaurants and summer rental agencies all along the Atlantic shore looked to rebound — millions of tourists, after all, depended on them. So did a large part of New Jersey’s economy. Those on the other side of the state, on the western shore, lurched into winter, stumbled into spring and dragged themselves through summer largely out of sight and out of mind. Cumberland County, the second-poorest county in New Jersey, was declared a disaster area after the hurricane, but was not named one of the nine counties eligible to receive the bulk of $1.8 billion in federal aid. Trenton listens, but nothing gets done. That’s what they’re saying in Down Jersey, as the people here refer to this part of the state. Stronger NJ revitalization money?
Hurricane Sandy aftermath: Future for New Jersey salt hay farmers in jeopardyFor generations, Mike Coombs and his family have harvested hay and other crops throughout the Delaware Bay coast in Southwest New Jersey. One of the most valuable crops that Coombs cuts and sells is naturally occurring salt hay, an indigenous solid-stem grass that grows in the marsh meadows of the bayshore. But things are changing for farmers like Coombs who is among just a handful in the state that still harvests salt hay. Salt water intrusion because of rising tide levels and failing dikes are part of the problem. Perhaps the biggest challenge Coombs faces are the strict environmental regulations which make it more difficult for him to gain access to salt hay fields, threatening to put him out of business. (Video by Andre Malok/The Star-Ledger)
Zero. Stronger NJ Business grants? Zilch. Reconstruction, Rehabilitation and Elevation funds? Zip. Last week, the Christie administration and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced 32 beach and dune construction projects along 44 miles of New Jersey coastline — none of them along the Delaware Bay. “On the Atlantic coast, there’s a $40 million boardwalk, huge beach replenishment, waterways cleaned. Down here, it’s a dead zone,” said Bob Campbell, mayor of Downe Township. “We don’t qualify for anything.” In the 12 months since Hurricane Sandy, Gov. Christie, President Obama, Vice President Biden, even Britain’s Prince Harry have all visited the eastern shore of New Jersey, but not the western shore. Christie alone has made dozens of trips to the barrier islands — six in one week — to Brigantine, Belmar and Beach Haven; to Sayreville, Sea Bright and Seaside Heights. He helped open Margaritaville, the new $35 million casino in Atlantic City, rode the tram in Wildwood and strolled the Washington Street Mall in Cape May. But along the 93.5 miles of Delaware Bayshore that stretches from Salem County’s Elsinboro to Cape May Point, neither the governor nor the lieutenant governor has been seen. Not in Fortescue or Gandy’s Beach; not in Bayside, Bay Point or Money Island; not in Greenwich, or at King’s Crab Ranch and Marina or at the historic Charlesworth Hotel, which remains uninhabitable.
Hurricane Sandy aftermath: Failing dikes threaten the future of Historic GreenwichHistoric Greenwich is a Delaware Bay community located on the banks of the Cohansey River in Cumberland County. It's probably best known by the event known as the Greenwich Tea Burning of 1774, that's New Jersey's version of the Boston Tea Party. For Greenwich residents, flooding has been a serious problem here for years because of the damaged and failing protective dikes that surround the township. Hurricane Sandy in 2012 had compromised the dikes to an even greater degree. Many residents believe that the state wants the people living along the coast to go away. But for them, it's not acceptable. Family roots run deep here, and they want the Township, County and State to protect them and their property. (Video by Andre Malok/The Star-Ledger)
“All we’re asking for is, could you please just come out to the Bayshore communities?” said Joe Derella, Freeholder Director for Cumberland County. “I don’t think that’s unreasonable. I think that’s fair because they’ve been devastated.” Part of Cumberland County’s dilemma is that it has suffered one blow of hard luck after another. Nine New Jersey counties met the federal threshold of 1 percent tax assessment losses, and the governor had no part in determining that. Cumberland came up just short, though Derella says four of the county’s Bayshore townships lost between 8 and 10 percent. Where state aid is concerned, Gov. Christie says he’s had to make difficult choices, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t aware of the struggles of Cumberland County’s residents. “I understand they suffered some damage there, and that they have needs going forward, but they suffered significantly less damage than those other nine counties,” Christie said last week in an interview with The Star-Ledger. “And so I understand that everybody wants to be attended to with that same level of attention — that’s not possible. And so I make these decisions based upon the level of devastation and the degree of need, and that’s where we spend most of our time. That being said, we’ve done things for Cumberland County. We’ve done significant things.” But while $1.6 billion has been allocated so far to the nine hardest hit counties, Cumberland has received less than $2 million from the state, according to Derella and a number of the Bayshore mayors. That number does not include FEMA money or National Flood Insurance payouts that have gone directly to individual residents and businesses. The people of Down Jersey bowed under the weight of Sandy’s destruction, and when a vicious nor’easter hit two months later, their knees buckled. It wasn’t about being ignored — they were used to that, they were fine with that — it was about being ignored when so much was wrong. The storm shattered lives and livelihoods, sweeping away precious fishing grounds that sustain thousands and contribute millions to the state economy.
Commercial fisherman Bob Bateman standing outside his work shop behind his house in Bivalve. Bateman's property continues to flood during full moon high tides because of a breach in the bank of the Maurice River about a half mile away. Bateman had four feet of water in his home during Hurricane Sandy.Andre Malok/The Star-Ledger
Spend time on the wide grass prairies as they cut salt hay or on the bay as they rake oysters. Drink a can or two of Bud with them, walk the drenched land with them and see for yourself how nothing much has changed since Sandy throttled the Bayshore. Be sure to stop along the beachfront, too. Homes that once huddled here against the storm now form ghost towns from which only occasionally a man or woman emerges, specterlike, to claim not all is lost. Do this and you will see and hear for yourself what it means to die not from a natural disaster, but from neglect, with no one to help, no one who has the governor’s ear and no experience asking for public money after a disaster. Meghan Wren, the executive director of the nonprofit Bayshore Discovery Project, even resorted to swimming 13.1 miles across the Delaware Bay on Aug. 3 to raise $25,000 for her program as well as the Cumberland County Long Term Recovery Group and the Rising Tides Forum, which aims to prepare the area for future storms and sea-level rise. With more than $30 million in property damage alone, the 300,000 residents of the Bayshore region are living in a limbo from which no one sees a way out. They are shy, self-sufficient and resilient and have been for 350 years; they are used to living on little and asking for less. But in all the generations of all of Down Jersey, they have never been tested like this. “We don’t have a boardwalk, we don’t have a casino, but we’re still important. We’re people with lives and homes and it’s really sad,” said Kathryn Weisenburg of Fortescue. “That song ‘Stronger than the Storm’? That song breaks our heart.”
'SERENGETI OF THE WEST'
It’s easy to see why wildlife biologists and conservationists refer to the Delaware Bayshore as the “Serengeti of the West.” The land stretches to the horizon, Kansas-flat, revealing a painter’s palette of green. Asparagus, iris and morning glory grow wild by the side of the road. And over islands of water in the middle of meadows, snowy egrets flutter awkwardly to earth like tetherless kites. So flat is the western coast of the state that many who live here have a view of both sunrise and sunset and the constellation Cassiopeia can be seen year-round. Sixty-five miles of New Jersey’s Delaware Bay coastline is an estuary where freshwater streams and rivers mingle with the saltwater tides, and more than 1.6 million people live in its watershed. Annually, the Delaware Bay estuary provides $5.3 billion in ecosystem services, according to a 2011 report by the University of Delaware’s School of Public Policy & Administration, and those services directly account for 53,000 jobs. But while the Bayshore gets attention for its rich natural resources, its residents feel overlooked. “We’re an environmental Disneyland,” said Campbell, Downe Township’s mayor. “We’re here to take care of it, but with no money to do so.” More than a third of Cumberland County residents and more than half the county’s children — twice the state average — live below the poverty line, according to last month’s report from the New Jersey Poverty Research Institute. But of the $780 million set aside by the state for three “Stronger NJ” programs, Cumberland County is eligible for none of it. Steve Fleetwood, the president and CEO of Bivalve Packing Co., understands the value of the Atlantic coast to the state’s economy, but he’s tired, he said, of being a second-class citizen. “I’ve lived here all my life. Nobody knows we’re here and nobody cares and that’s okay. It is what it is. But our channel needs dredging. The Bayshore is eroded. Nothing ever changes. It sure would be nice if someone recognized we were here.”
'CAN'T CATCH A BREAK'
Standing on the deck behind his mother’s house, Mike Coombs shakes his head and puts a pinch of chew under his lower lip.
Mike Coombs of Cedarville, one of the last salt hay farmers in New Jersey, baling hay on a Delaware Bay meadow. Salt water intrusion from failed dikes and strict environmental regulations may put Coombs out of business.Andre Malok/The Star-Ledger
Mikey — that’s what his mother calls him — has no idea what “New Jersey” the governor was talking about when he cut that ribbon in Belmar back in May because nothing has “come back” for him, or the fishermen or the rest of the Bayshore. “No weakfish, no flounder, there’s nothin’ in the bay and the salt hay is flooded,” he said. “It’s hard enough to make a dollar. I work out here in the heat with the greenhead flies. … I have hundreds of acres of meadow I pay taxes on. I don’t get a break at all.” “Can’t catch a break” — you hear that all the time down here. If these people didn’t have hard luck, as the saying goes, they’d have no luck at all.
STORM'S LINGERING SPECTER
Just north of Mike’s meadows, in Greenwich (pronounced “Green-witch”), Martin “Reds” Morse wonders if his home will ever be completely dry again. The hurricane barreled through dozens of centuries-old levees along the Delaware Bay, including one just 200 yards from Reds’ place where a thick hose now snakes across his front lawn, pumping water from a basement that floods twice a day at high tide. In Bivalve, Bob Bateman, a commercial crabber, and his girlfriend, Billie Jo Hill, sit at an old wooden workbench in the garage behind their home and spoon macaroni and cheese onto paper plates. The walls of the old building are bare of Sheetrock, lined only with bloated rolls of insulation swollen from the frequent floodwaters. Sandy blew out a sand berm on a nearby river, the Maurice (pronounced “MOR-ris”), and the hurricane’s surge sent thousands of gallons of river water crashing through their house. Everything on the first floor was ruined.
Martin "Reds" Morse stands beside the mural he painted on the exterior of his garage depicting a local lighthouse, an oyster schooner and the 100-year-old shad boat "Viking" he keeps in his front yard in Greenwich, Cumberland County.Andre Malok/The Star-Ledger
“We’re still struggling,” he said. Just down the road from Bob’s place, next to the marina, is Surfside Products, which processes virtually all the surf and ocean quahog clams landed by New Jersey fishermen. In terms of total economic impact, Dave Bushek, director of Rutgers’ Shellfish Research Laboratory in Port Norris, estimates an annual contribution of $180 million. But the plant also sits just yards away from that sand berm breached during Sandy and its parking lot floods now with every high tide. Like Mike Coombs, Bob remains haunted by the hurricane. Just a few months ago, his nephew Josh was dredging for crabs and conch in the Delaware Bay with two other crewmen, all of them in their 20s, when their line suddenly snagged something on the bottom. The boat, the Linda Claire, capsized. Two of the men — boys, really — were saved, but not 23-year-old Josh. If you ask the older fishermen about it, they will shake their heads and tell you that like the hand of Neptune himself, a piece of Sandy debris surely took that boat down. The people of Down Jersey once hunted whales off these shores, scooped up oysters and fished for sturgeon and blue crabs in the rivers and the bay. They diked the meadows for salt hay, grew vegetables and planted fruit orchards; they hammered bog iron that bubbled up from the estuary into wrought iron and blew the finest Delaware Bay sand into delicate glass. They married here and had children here — fishermen and farmers, glassblowers and gaffers, sail-makers and shipbuilders and hot-metal chargers — and when one industry went bust, they made do and found another. What they didn’t do was give up or move away, instead accepting a life in that ever-shifting liminal space between the tides and terra firma, understanding they belonged to neither. And if they went largely ignored by the rest of the state, well, that was fine with them. In this secluded part of New Jersey, it’s common to see a family’s wash drying on clotheslines in the backyard, shirts and pants dancing jigs in the breeze. In the summer, hungry field workers follow the scent of charcoal fires and pork drippings to roadside barbecue pits. And along Route 47, which winds, serpentine, through the meadows, vegetable, flower and fruit stands advertise specials on cockscomb, aster and marigold; chives, pepper and sweet pea; and all manner of tomatoes — Yellow Brandywine, Jetsetter, Bush Early Girl, Roma and Marconi Red. The stands display their homegrown wares in neat rows and overflowing baskets, but they are unattended. Instead, patrons pay by dropping money into honor boxes.
Ed "Shep" Sheppard and Martin "Reds" Morse walk along Mill Creek Dike in Greenwich, Cumberland County. Many locals fear the dike will be taken out by the next big storm.Andre Malok/The Star-Ledger
But drive the less-traveled roads of the Bayshore and you’ll see abandoned homes and businesses, raw and vulnerable, stripped bare of their skin. They sag in the cold, swoon in the heat and list right or left as if too tired to stand up straight. On Oct. 29, 2012, when Sandy spun chaos up and down the state, Cumberland County could ill afford a disaster of such magnitude. In June, barely four months earlier, it took the brunt of a derecho, a brief but violent thunderstorm, and a year before Sandy, it was pummeled by Hurricane Irene. Each assault by nature ripped apart bulkheads, earthen dikes and sandy berms — the man-made structures that hold back the bay, rivers and creeks all along the western shore of the state. With little money available, few repairs were made and levees were left to erode even more. “Since Sandy, just talks and no funding for fixing it, Maurice River Township Mayor Andy Sarclette said. “The government requires a hundred meetings just to take out the trash.” “I make policy based upon facts and the facts are there’s significantly more damage in lots of other places in the state than there was in Cumberland,” Christie said. The governor’s office cites $3.9 million in grant-related hazard mitigation money went to Cumberland County, but those funds came from FEMA and though distributed by the state, Derella said, the amount was also pre-determined by FEMA. Direct aid from Trenton to Cumberland County amounted to a $200,000 community disaster loan to Downe Township from the Department of Community Affairs to dredge a sandbar from the middle of Fortescue Creek, $756,000 for homeowner and rental assistance, which Cumberland County learned about last week, and a $1 million piece of the $50 million pie the state determined would be Cumberland’s share of federal mitigation money. Four years ago, in October 2009, Downe Township received a promise of $543,500 from the state to build a new bulkhead and resurface three major roads. Two hurricanes, a derecho and several nor’easters later, the township is still waiting. Long before the storm, acres of heartache blanketed Down Jersey. “Those beaches could have been protected with a jetty, but nobody cared,” said Bivalve’s Fleetwood. “We’re not only paying for everyone in New Jersey to enjoy open spaces, but no one’s worried about our own bay.” Others believe the neglect is far from benign. “There is no effort to breathe life back into the Bayshore,” said Mayor Campbell who blames, in part, the DEP and New Jersey’s tidewaters lease act, which allows the state to claim whatever property is below the mean high-water line, even when it shifts farther inland. “It’s all about power and money,” he said. “They want to own the land. It’s like the Gestapo. They fly over our communities and make sure we haven’t built a pond for ducks in our backyard. They’ve regulated our land away from us without paying us for it. They have this mentality that humans are bad and everything should be natural.”
A mile of private bulkheads in Downe Township were washed away by the hurricane, according to Campbell, who has been unable to get the DEP to help pay for new ones.
"On the Atlantic coast, there's a $40 million boardwalk, huge beach replenishment, waterways cleaned. Down here, it's a dead zone."
The DEP said it has not received any request from the mayor for permits to build a new bulkhead. “We’re aware of the issues and have been in touch,” said DEP spokesperson Larry Ragonese. Ragonese said if the residential bulkhead is reconstructed in the same footprint, no permits are needed. Campbell said that wouldn’t make sense, since the only place to build a new bulkhead is farther back. “Time is our enemy,” he said. “On the Atlantic side, they’re getting easements to put up bulkheads. I could get easements, but we don’t have the money. I will lose half the houses inland in Fortescue if we have a storm because we have no bulkhead. I asked someone from the DEP, ‘There’s nothing I can do to help my community?’ He said, ‘Nope.’ ” “These are not simple matters,” Ragonese said. “Come to us with a plan. We’re willing to work with them and be as accommodating as we can.” Nothing, however, comes easy here. In the months after Sandy, while the Atlantic coast slowly resumed its life and returned to normal — boardwalks and bulkheads rebuilt, amusement parks restored and businesses revitalized — the western coast of New Jersey languished: • Today Cumberland County’s $200 million recreational and commercial fishing, crabbing and clamming industries remain devastated, and Delaware Bay fishermen say they’ve had the worst summer in decades. • Of South Jersey's 70 centuries-old dikes, 28 are located in Cumberland County, and many that were critically eroded and degraded before Sandy were breached during the hurricane. Only a handful have been repaired. • Ninety percent of the water just off the central part of the Atlantic coast has been surveyed for debris and 100 percent of the debris removed, according to the DEP, but on the western coast less than half the Delaware Bay has been surveyed and only a third of the debris removed, making one of New Jersey’s prime fishing grounds, in one of the shallowest bays in the United States, suddenly one of the most dangerous to navigate. “They don’t believe anything is sustainable here anymore,” said James Watson, director of the Cumberland County Department of Economic Development about what he believes is the state’s reluctance to help. “We have 40 miles of shoreline in Cumberland County, and only 3 miles have economic development. Leave us those 3 miles so we can try and build it back.”
THE FORCE OF NATURE
Sandy peeled back so much sand and sod from the beaches and marshes you can read the biography of the Bayshore in the bits and pieces that ooze from its bluish mud: Depression glass, an old fishing reel, fragments of ceramic dinner plates and tea cups. Embedded in the sod banks that finger the fringe of the Bay are also chunks of glass called cullet, chipped from the bottoms of factory furnaces years ago and now glinting in the sunshine like pieces of frozen starlight. The seasons here are measured by the shades and hues of the meadows and the days by the wind and the tides. Land and sea shift slowly, incrementally. Everything runs in cycles. If the eastern shore of New Jersey tells time by two seasons (winter and summer), the western shore tells time by the phases of the moon, the direction of the wind and the ebb and flow of water. Nothing stays still. Fast currents and slack tides — dead high or dead low — are bad for crabbing; November brings flocks of snow geese to feast on the roots of salt hay and gnaw the meadows to nothing. Even the smallest of creatures, the coffee-bean snail, trudges laboriously up the stem of a blade of cordgrass twice a day to avoid being swept away by a high tide.
RISING TIDE OF MISERY
Before dawn yawns its way across the bay, Mike Coombs is up and ready for work. In boots and baseball cap, he jumps in his truck and rides out to one of the meadows where four generations of his family have cut and baled salt hay, prized as insulation and sold by nurseries and garden centers. On this day, just after a full-moon high tide, acres of salt hay, weakened by the wind and tides, have fallen into soft swirls like the damp curls of sleeping babies. At the edges of the meadow, water soaks the ground and pools in the tire tracks. The earth is still too wet and soft to support the weight of a tractor. “The tide table is my worst enemy,” Mike said.
Go north along the Delaware Bay, 25 miles above Bivalve, past the N.J. Fish and Wildlife preserves of Turkey Point, Egg Island, Fortescue, Nantuxent and Sea Breeze, and you finally arrive at Greenwich, founded in 1684 and one of the first ports of entry established in this country when it was still under British rule. Greenwich sits on the Cohansey River and just a couple of miles from the center of town is Bayside, once known as Caviar Point. For the first 200 years of the republic, thousands of schooners sailed into port here, brimming with whale meat, then sturgeon, weakfish and oysters. In the late 1800s, Russia imported caviar from this tiny New Jersey hamlet, but in less than a decade the sturgeon population plummeted to near extinction. Today the dock is just a skeleton of wood pylons. The hand-hewn, red oak poles stand in 6 feet of water but support nothing but sea gulls. A few hundred yards from the pier is Delaware Avenue with its rambling three-story Victorian homes built by men made millionaires from the Bayshore’s rich fishing grounds. During Hurricane Sandy, the wind scooped the shingles off the roof of the 160-year-old home of “Reds” Morse and the surging water pushed past the house, through the backyard and a quarter mile into the reeds to the edge of a cornfield. Reds’ first floor stayed dry, but not his basement, which he now must pump twice a day at high tide. The problem for Reds and the other homes along historic Delaware Avenue really began in 1989, when the nearby Pine Mount Dike, built in 1802, breached in a storm. A year later, the Army Corps of Engineers and the DEP repaired it. “They used gravel and it washed away,” Reds said. “Lasted maybe a year.” His basement now gets 6 inches of water at high tide. Reds has always worked two jobs, one on land — in the boatyards, or at the marina, and now for the Bridgeton Water and Sewer Department — and the other on the water, catching shad, sturgeon, weakfish, even snapping turtles he sells to Philadelphia restaurants to make snapper soup. You can see him smiling broadly in one of the photos on his wall. It’s Easter Sunday 2004, and Reds, a licensed captain, stands in a skiff filled to the brim with shad. Though he works in the city all week, Reds fishes when he can and he has the ruddy complexion of a waterman — which is what the fishermen down here call themselves — to prove it. Reds peered out over the old Pine Mount Dike, barely visible above the surface of the water. “This used to be a stream,” he said of the 300-400-foot-wide tributary rushing by. “And all around here used to be all woods, freshwater meadow, 50-foot-tall trees, with the dike protecting it. Now it’s just a big mud pit.” Although 13,000 acres of Cumberland County have been set aside under the New Jersey Farmland Preservation Program, ghost forests now rise where woods and freshwater meadows used to be. Sea-level rise pushed salty high tides farther inland, say coastal science experts, until it choked the cedar and pine trees and bleached their bare bones white. “Water is coming up over tillable soil,” Reds said. “We’re paying taxes for it and it’s useless. Why are they letting it wash away?”
EMPTY TRAPS, HEAVY HEARTS
In late summer, the fog tumbles fast and low along the Maurice River as Bob Bateman steers his 24-foot boat away from Longreach Marina. “Looks like we got smoke on the water,” he announces, a Marlboro hanging precariously from his lower lip. The early morning mist sneaks over the bow of his boat and exhaust pours noisily from the outboard motor, absorbing the plume of smoke from Bob’s cigarette. The old two-stroke, 200-horsepower engine burns both oil and gas, and the thick smell seems to leave a permanent slick in the briney air. Bob’s at home here. So are Rich and Lou, his two cigarette-smoking crewmen, all of whom appear oblivious to the cigarette ashes falling in snowy flakes onto the 5-gallon containers of fuel near their feet. The men putter from one buoy to the next, rhythmically hauling lines and hooking traps in a close-quarters dance that yields few crabs and little enthusiasm. Instead, buoy after buoy brings up disappointment — five crabs, four, six, where dozens should be. Two-hundred-and-nine pots fill just five bushel baskets instead of the usual 20-25, according to Bob, who said it’s been that way all summer. “The spawn that was in the water last October; those baby crabs either got washed onto the shore or washed out to sea,” he said. “It makes it very tough. We really don’t have anything else to turn to, nothing else to catch.” Bob’s boat approaches another orange buoy. “Last one,” he says, as he hooks trap number 210. Rich upends it. Nothing. Not a single crab. Even the bait is missing. The crew has been on the water just three hours, but already the day is over. He takes a long drag on his Marlboro Light 100. “Well, that’s it,” he says, and turns the boat toward home. Not far from Bivalve, at Beaver Dam Boat Rentals, you can ask Lynn Waterman to show you the sign she hung on the door of the business she runs with her husband. She’s not shy about showing it. In fact, she’s almost proud of it in a tired kind of way. Sandy left a sandbar in the creek that makes it impossible to even kayak in or out of the dock at low tide. Lynn made the sign herself, on white oak tag. It reads, simply, “I wasn’t stronger than the storm.” It hung outside for weeks, which is why aortal rivers of purple ink run from each letter in jagged streaks.
LITTLE LEFT TO LOSE
Twelve months after Sandy swept away much of the first floor of his home, Bob and Billie Jo are still looking for their washing machine. “We lost everything — my office, refrigerator, stove, washer and dryer,” Bob said. “The washing machine is somewhere in the meadow.” Swept, too, from Bob’s yard and barn were outboard motors, air compressors, pressure washers and tools he uses as a waterman. Flood insurance covered the $40,000-$50,000 of damage Sandy did to the house, but not to his business, including the 80 crab traps he lost. Since the hurricane, his property and barn have flooded repeatedly, including earlier this month when a nor’easter sat for four days over the Bayshore. The problem, he said, is the sand berm, the one on the Maurice River that was deteriorating for years and then collapsed in the hurricane. Now, at high tide, even during ordinary rainstorms, water rushes through the opening in the berm, washes over a nearby dike and floods the only road that separates Bob’s property from the river and bay. “I don’t have much left to lose,” he says wearily. Bob takes another long drag on his Marlboro. So does Billie Jo on hers. They’re both quiet. When asked about his own worries, Bob answers by saying he’s been smoking more cigarettes lately. He elected to collect his Social Security retirement benefits before reaching 65 so he has some steady income, and on his next birthday, his 65th, he’ll be eligible for Medicare. In the winter he gets heating assistance from the state, and because he has no health insurance, relies on “charity care” at Inspira Medical Center in Vineland. Three weeks ago, he was treated for a painful infection in his right leg and given antibiotics. In the old garage where Bob stores much of his equipment, he lines up the watery prizes he scoops up occasionally with his crabs. The shelf is only about 6 feet long, but since Sandy his dredges and pots have brought up basketfuls of bottles, an old shaving cup, a large urn, even a 5-foot tall, barnacle-encrusted anchor. Things that were never there before, at least where he set his pots for more than 30 years. “No doubt about it,” he said. “Sandy moved a lot of things around.”
THE LAST VICTIM
When the 40-foot Linda Claire capsized in April and Bob’s nephew Josh drowned, local officials declared the accident was caused by underwater debris. That part of the Delaware Bay where Josh was lost was clear of debris, according to the most recent navigational map used by the watermen — clear, that is, before Sandy. On Oct. 29, 2012, the day of the worst natural disaster in New Jersey history, Josh celebrated his 23rd birthday. Six months later, he was dead. Thirty-five days after that, his body was found on Fowler Beach, on the other side of Delaware Bay. Behind the Haleyville United Methodist Church, built in 1864, the cemetery spreads out well beyond the old cedar trees that stand sentinel around the oldest graves. The weathered limestone monuments bear faded names of some of the Bayshore’s oldest families, names like Sheppard and Sharp, Blizzard and Bateman, Stiles and Stubbs. Walk at an angle, toward the far corner of the cemetery, and you will see the generations come and go. There are Catletts here, too — James D. Catlett, 1897-1984; Ben Catlett, 1933-2004; Mary Catlett, 1926-2009. In the back of the cemetery, in an area farthest from the church, a musty smell rises from the recently turned soil. A patch of grassy sod, stitched onto one of the graves, is decorated with oyster shells and artificial flowers. In one corner, a child’s shiny blue pinwheel suddenly pauses in the brisk breeze, uncertain which way to spin. A simple silver plate marks the place where a monument will soon sit. The plate isn’t very large, just large enough to hold a name and two dates: Joshua M. Catlett, 1989-2013. A son of South Jersey, a waterman — the last victim of Hurricane Sandy.
Last year on 11/2 you posted on Sandy's destruction of securities docs : http://fredw-catharsisours.blogspot.com/2012/11/trillions-of-dollars-worth-of.html I saved that one on my faves for reference. Much like the 9/11 WTC takedown that destroyed docs, the Sandy doc destruction was an event with mega implications in the transfer of wealth, Crime Inc gone wild.
NW - And what have we ever heard about that one ? Nothing whatsoever , right ?
It was as if that was just a passing thought , a throw away line written by some journalist not worth following up on - ever ! Whatever was destroyed not worth discussing , not worth media coverage , not worth any explanation from the Banks or their Regulators.......
By 
Commercial fisherman Bob Bateman standing outside his work shop behind his house in Bivalve. Bateman's property continues to flood during full moon high tides because of a breach in the bank of the Maurice River about a half mile away. Bateman had four feet of water in his home during Hurricane Sandy.
Spend time on the wide grass prairies as they cut salt hay or on the bay as they rake oysters. Drink a can or two of Bud with them, walk the drenched land with them and see for yourself how nothing much has changed since Sandy throttled the Bayshore. Be sure to stop along the beachfront, too. Homes that once huddled here against the storm now form ghost towns from which only occasionally a man or woman emerges, specterlike, to claim not all is lost. Do this and you will see and hear for yourself what it means to die not from a natural disaster, but from neglect, with no one to help, no one who has the governor’s ear and no experience asking for public money after a disaster.
Mike Coombs of Cedarville, one of the last salt hay farmers in New Jersey, baling hay on a Delaware Bay meadow. Salt water intrusion from failed dikes and strict environmental regulations may put Coombs out of business.
Mikey — that’s what his mother calls him — has no idea what “New Jersey” the governor was talking about when he cut that ribbon in Belmar back in May because nothing has “come back” for him, or the fishermen or the rest of the Bayshore.
Martin "Reds" Morse stands beside the mural he painted on the exterior of his garage depicting a local lighthouse, an oyster schooner and the 100-year-old shad boat "Viking" he keeps in his front yard in Greenwich, Cumberland County.
“We’re still struggling,” he said.
Ed "Shep" Sheppard and Martin "Reds" Morse walk along Mill Creek Dike in Greenwich, Cumberland County. Many locals fear the dike will be taken out by the next big storm.
But drive the less-traveled roads of the Bayshore and you’ll see abandoned homes and businesses, raw and vulnerable, stripped bare of their skin. They sag in the cold, swoon in the heat and list right or left as if too tired to stand up straight. On Oct. 29, 2012, when Sandy spun chaos up and down the state, Cumberland County could ill afford a disaster of such magnitude. In June, barely four months earlier, it took the brunt of a derecho, a brief but violent thunderstorm, and a year before Sandy, it was pummeled by Hurricane Irene. Each assault by nature ripped apart bulkheads, earthen dikes and sandy berms — the man-made structures that hold back the bay, rivers and creeks all along the western shore of the state. With little money available, few repairs were made and levees were left to erode even more.
Last year on 11/2 you posted on Sandy's destruction of securities docs :
ReplyDeletehttp://fredw-catharsisours.blogspot.com/2012/11/trillions-of-dollars-worth-of.html
I saved that one on my faves for reference. Much like the 9/11 WTC takedown that destroyed docs, the Sandy doc destruction was an event with mega implications in the transfer of wealth, Crime Inc gone wild.
NW - And what have we ever heard about that one ? Nothing whatsoever , right ?
ReplyDeleteIt was as if that was just a passing thought , a throw away line written by some journalist not worth following up on - ever ! Whatever was destroyed not worth discussing , not worth media coverage , not worth any explanation from the Banks or their Regulators.......