Newsworks, Feb. 12, 2014

Lee Ann Newland and husband John Lambert, sort through items, inside their Sandy damaged home near the Shark River in Neptune, N.J. (AP Photo/Mel Evans, file)

BY TRACEY SAMUELSON

A hearing that was supposed to focus on thestate’s plan to spend $1.4 billion in Sandy recovery funds quickly turned into a public venting session for some of the nearly 200 attendees. Frustration, anger, and disappointment dominated the comments of homeowners, renters, and advocacy groups gathered at Richard Stockton College Tuesday.

Their list of complaints were long and varied, but many attendees focused their anger on the Department of Community Affairs and the RREM Grant it administers, the state’s largest program to help Sandy-damaged homeowners with up to $150,000 of repairs costs.

“Right now, [RREM] is a black eye on our state,” said Jane Peltonen from Brigantine. “It’s redundant and it’s a debacle.”

Addressing DCA Commissioner Richard Constable, Dr. Steven Fenichel began his remarks by saying he could “finally put a face on this terrible nemesis that’s been plaguing me for about a year now.”

The DCA said it’s already begun addressing many of the attendees’ complaints. In January, the agency dismissed a subcontractor responsible for collecting and evaluating grant applications, which many homeowners blamed for poor service.

“The process is going to be a lot better for the thousand folks who’ve just been released off the wait list than for the first thousand folks who were initially part of the program back in July and August,” said Commissioner Constable, after meeting with five members of the audience to try to resolve particular personal issues.

While Sandy struck the East Coast in October 2012, Constable noted that the state has only had access to federal funds for ten months because of the time it took to get funding allocated and the state’s initial action plan approved.

“No one wants to hear that,” he acknowledged. “Folks want to get back into their homes. We understand it.”

Responding to comments about onerous paperwork and lengthy reviews, Marc Ferzan, the executive director of the Governor’s Office of Recovery and Rebuilding, promised to release a detailed list of federal requirements that he says are responsible for many delays.

“We feel equally as frustrated as all of you do,” he assured the audience.

While most individuals shared personal stories of confusion and delay, representatives from advocacy groups including the New Jersey Sierra Club and Clean Ocean Action voiced concerns about the state’s lack of initiatives and planning to address sea level rise. The Fair Share Housing Center drew applause when suggesting better communication and transparency about grant eligibility criteria.

The hearing was required as part of the federal approval process for the state’s plan to spend a second batch of recovery funds. Two additional hearings are scheduled.

Feb. 12; New Jersey Institute of Technology; 150 Bleeker St., Newark; Campus Center; 5:30–8:30 p.m.Feb. 21; Brookdale Community College; Robert J. Collins Arena; 765 Newman Springs Road, Lincroft; 4–7:30 p.m. (Rescheduled from Feb 13 due to weather)

The Atlantic, Feb. 12, 2014

by Theodore R. Johnson

I’d experienced it before, but it was especially palpable one morning when I had to run around two white women out for a walk at a high school track. I felt the need to shrink – to make myself small and move past them at a distance comfortable to us all. If they perceived a threat – albeit, one clad in a Harvard shirt, “Go Navy” shorts – it could turn out rather poorly for me. So my body language, involuntarily and quite naturally, conveyed passivity. Of course, I’d done or said nothing that should have made them feel endangered, but the presence of my blackness in a space where they hadn’t expected to encounter it placed the onus on me to make them comfortable.

This is what it feels like to be black in America. It sounds like the symphony of locking car doors as I traipse through a grocery store parking lot, armed with kale chips and turkey bacon. It looks like smiling when I don’t feel like it. It’s the instinct to enunciate differently, to use acceptable methods of signaling that I am safe to engage, or at least to disregard. “We wear the mask that grins and lies,” wrote the poet Paul Laurence Dunbar. I feel that mask covering my soul, never allowing me to just freely exist.

I could argue that any negative reaction to my skin is a problem for others to grapple with and of no concern to me. I’ve tried that approach before; one memorable attempt ended with me being pulled out of my car by two police officers and handcuffed for the felonious infractions of having a blown headlight and insufficient self-abasement. It is an unspoken rule that blackness’ first and most important task is to make everyone feel safe from it. We ignore this mandate at our own peril, realizing that a simple misunderstanding is a life or death proposition.

Jonathan Ferrell ran towards police seeking help after a car accident and was given a hail of bullets for his troubles. Renisha McBride went in search of a Good Samaritan after her accident and a shotgun blast answered her knock. Teenager Trayvon Martin walked home with candy and tea and was greeted by the nervous trigger finger wrapped in an adult’s gun. Jordan Davis sat in a car outside a convenience store listening to music and a man who objected to the volume cut his life short with the boom of a firearm. The principal crime all of them committed, like countless others over the centuries, was being black and not sufficiently prostrating themselves to ensure the comfort of others.

As Black History Month ambles on, the heroic contributions and monumental achievements of black Americans take center stage. We remember these champions and the bouts they fought, but they’re presented as extraordinary human beings—legends whose anomalous stories don’t neatly translate to everyday interracial encounters. As I move around the country, the behavior that greets me is usually more influenced by the black faces that fill crime-ridden local newscasts than the exceptionality of Charles Drew, James Baldwin, or Thurgood Marshall. The great black women and men who populate Black History Month celebrations feel like characters in a novel—a world away from the black guy a few steps behind you in a barren parking garage.

In short, exceptions tend to prove the rule. A detached appreciation of Harriet Tubman and her Underground Railroad does not change the way drivers react when they pull up alongside a car full of black teenagers at a stoplight—or the purse-clutching that occurs when I pass women at the train station.

What gets lost in the gleam of these once-in-a-generation personalities and tip-of-the-iceberg events is the dull ache in the glacier below. A closer examination of those hidden feelings always seems to elude the nation, even during this month of spotlight. It’s the genesis of the uncomfortable silence that hangs in the air whenever someone attempts to begin a conversation on race. The prerequisite for honest dialogue is an admission that blackness is uncomfortable to others, and that this fact influences the behavior of us all.

Combating this harmful notion is hard work. The threatening caricature of blackness spans hundreds of year. It dates back to the laws that prohibited large gatherings of slaves, out of an irrational fear that any such congregation would lead to a dastardly plot to kill white men and rape their women. It carries through the subtle implications in the “analysis” of a dreadlocked black football player’s post-game exuberance. The public face of black America is dominated by the tragedy porn of male criminality and recidivism, welfare mothers with babies by multiple men, and dilapidated neighborhoods with shiftless neighbors. All of this reinforces the notions that make blackness threatening to Americans of other cultures.

Establishing Black History month was a significant achievement, but the next step is to snatch history from the wind and plant it in the personal narratives of black Americans. The names subjected to rote February recitations intersect with personal, everyday stories. Black Americans should use the month as a time for deeper, and more public, exploration of their own journeys in an attempt to combat the lazy labels plastered on the black experience.

Discovering our stories means engaging our elders and partaking in the oral tradition that characterized black narratives for centuries. It means tending to the branches of our family trees – even those pruned by the blades of slavery – and using technology to fill in the gaps. It means placing our existence in the larger context of black and American history. This is what gave Alex Haley’s Roots such power. This is what’s behind the advent of the DNA-based genealogy businesses that seek to tell bits of the stories lost to the ages. This is the catalyst for television shows and documentaries that explore personal stories through a historical lens. And this is why our black president speaks of the impossibility of his story happening anywhere but here.

Such an approach looks like the black adolescent in his Sunday best reciting a famous oration of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and following it with a rigorous reply to the age-old question familiar in the black community: “Who are your people?” And then sharing that answer with the nation.

When we tell our stories, we, and our history, become more vivid, and accessible, to all. We animate the historical texts, giving character to the facts, emotions to the events, and humanity to our heroes. And we give others a chance to recognize our shared human condition. As they get to know the stories of ordinary black people, their default emotion upon encountering blackness will bend away from fear.

I’m not foolish enough to believe sharing my personal story will negate the stereotypes that surround me. But I’m certain that when people are not engaged in this way, they are boxed in generalities that do nothing to advance human relations. We find ourselves trying to live confidently, but remain cognizant that we are only allowed so much freedom of expression. Writing in The Atlantic in 1897, W.E.B. Dubois described this state of perpetual balance as twoness: “an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.”

I ran past those ladies without incident. And I lapped them a couple times before I finished my run and prepared to leave. As I was gathering my things, another man began his jog on the track and the women greeted him with a “good morning.” The fact that my departure was noticed, but disregarded, felt like a small victory. Only a mutual desire to engage would’ve lessened the burden I packed up and took with me.

To finally free ourselves from the bubble of preemptive apologies that attends the threat of blackness, we need to tell our stories. And Black History Month is as good a time as any to start.

NRDC Switchboard, Feb. 10, 2014

by Al Huang

February 11, 2014 marks the 20th anniversary of President Bill Clinton’s signing of the historic Executive Order 12898 on Environmental Justice "Federal Actions to Address Environmental Justice in Minority Populations and Low-Income Populations."

The landmark Order was the first major federal action on environmental justice (EJ) in the United States and stated that all federal agencies "shall make achieving environmental justice part of its mission by identifying and addressing, as appropriate, disproportionately high and adverse human health or environmental effects of its programs, policies, and activities on minority populations and low-income populations." Many states followed the Order’s lead by adopting similar policy statements through executive power or legislation that gave legitimacy to the EJ movement and its underlying principle that low-income communities and communities of color bear a disproportionate burden of environmental pollution and its health effects.

Twenty years later, the Order’s legacy remains, despite several attempts to redefine its purpose away from addressing disproportional environmental impacts to people of color and low-income communities.

For example, in 2005 the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under Administrator Stephen Johnson attempted to redefine the purpose of the Order by dropping race as a factor in identifying and prioritizing populations that may be disadvantaged by a federal agency’s policies, asserting that all communities should be treated equally regardless of their race or socioeconomic status. This approach, which essentially scrubbed racial discrimination from the definition of EJ, led to the issuance of two scathing reports (one in 2004 and one in 2006) by EPA’s own Office of Inspector General concluding that EPA had failed to properly implement the intent of the Executive Order.

The Order was resuscitated in 2008 when President Barack Obama appointed Lisa Jackson as Administrator of EPA. Administrator Jackson quickly named EJ as one of her top priorities for EPA and re-established an EJ ethos in the agency. The result was unprecedented attention to and awareness of EJ issues at EPA. One of EPA’s achievements during this time was a substantial increase in EJ grant funding for community-based organizations by EPA from $5 million in 2009 to $7 million in 2013.

That said, although the Order put EJ on the map for the federal government and the Obama Administration has signified a committment to EJ, unfortunately twenty years later we still have communities all across the country that are still unnecessarily exposed to toxic pollution that threatens their health and quality of life. Many of these communities also lack basic environmental benefits too like a healthy home free of toxins, access to open spaces like parks, the availability of healthy foods, and safe and affordable public transportation.

So on this anniversary, we recognize that the collective struggle for EJ continues and the voices of low-income communities and communities of color around the country calling for justice grows louder and stronger. The Order was a key first step for the EJ movement in the US, but there still is a long road to achieving justice for low-income communities and communities of color facing environmental challenges in the US today.

Below is a fantastic blog post by Dr. Robert Bullard, one of the EJ movement’s first leaders, on the 20th anniversary of the Order and some of the EJ challenges that still remain today.

The full article can be found on Dr. Bullard’s site here.

Racism Review, Feb. 7, 2014

By Jessie Daniels

 

On Fridays, we’re bringing you innovative ways to think about resisting racism. We’ve written here before about comedy as a way to resist racism. One of the best people at using the weapon of comedy these days is Hari Kondabolu. Kondabolu is a Brooklyn-based, Queens-raised comic who has been described by Timeout NY as “smart, analytical and rising.” In this short clip (14:13) from a BBC show, you’ll see why he’s so good.  (Warning for some profanity,)

NJ Spotlight, Feb. 7, 2014

By HANK KALET

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development wants to make sure that Hurricane Sandy rebuilding efforts are not just focused on short-term goals.

That’s why HUD is holding a competition called Rebuild by Design that it hopes not only will rebuild the areas damaged by the October 2012 storm, but also will help those areas become both more resilient in the face of future storms and rising sea levels and more sustainable economically and environmentally.

RBD was announced by HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan in June 2013. Winners of the competition will be eligible for Sandy-related Community Development Block Grants, though actual funding has not been set aside. Rebuild by Design officials have said funding decisions will not be made until the end of the competition.

The competition is taking place in four stages, which began with an initial study of the larger region that was narrowed down to more specific proposals now being turned into master plans and designs for specific projects for places as diverse as Hoboken and the Connecticut coastline.

Initially, more than 140 teams entered the competition. Ten teams were chosen for the second round and submitted 41 “design opportunities,” or general concepts for various regions. For the third round, Donovan selected one option from each team in November, and each team is now moving forward with detailed designs and master plans.

The planning and design work being done by the teams, which include architects, designers, academics, and others, is being funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, the Community Foundation of New Jersey, and other nonprofits. Each participating team was given $100,000 for round two and another $100,000 to fund round-three work. The deadline for phase three plans is the end of March.

‘A Culture of Resiliency’

The goal is to build a “culture of resiliency” that addresses current and future climate and ocean conditions, Rebuild by Design co-chairman Henk Ovink said, while also using contemporary design and engineering approaches to create economic opportunities in the Sandy-affected region.

Ovink, who has served as director general of Spatial Planning and Water Affairs for the Dutch government, was asked by Donovan to oversee the competition because of the Netherlands’ experience with flooding and water-control issues. Nearly 60 percent of the Netherlands is prone to flooding, he said during a press briefing recently, which is why the Dutch have created a multidisciplinary approach to addressing flood risk that takes into account reduction of risk and growth. The intent is to bring many disciplines –architecture, design and planning, but also environmentalists, and business groups — together so that the goal is not just on protecting economic assets or safeguarding housing. Bringing everyone to the table, he said, will allow all of the concerns — the immediate danger to human life and economic stability, the impact that development has on these dangers, and the expected effects of seal-level rise — to be addressed.

Ovink and HUD officials said they are hoping for projects that both use and alter existing landscapes in ways to minimize the need for extensive flood walls, while at the same time using other assets — boardwalks, streetscapes, urban gardens and new green designs — to reduce storm surges and control water when it does breach the coastline.

The New Jersey Five

Of the final 10 teams, five are working on New Jersey projects that focus on the Shore, Hoboken, and the Meadowlands:

Coastal Commercial Financing, HR&A Advisors, Inc. with Cooper, Robertson & Partners

New Meadowlands: Productive City and Regional Park, MIT CAU/ZUS/Urbanisten

The Hoboken Plan, OMA Team

Resilience and the Beach, Sasaki/Rutgers/Arup

Designing with Nature for the Future of the Mid-Atlantic Coast, WXY/West 8

Five other teams are focusing on Manhattan; the Hunts Point neighborhood of the Bronx; Staten Island; Nassau County, NY.; and southern Bridgeport in Connecticut.

The teams have been working with public officials and community members in each region and have started holding public meetings not only to present their preliminary findings to residents and other stakeholders, but also to gain feedback from residents.

None of the teams were ready to offer cost estimates for their projects. They have until March to develop final drawings and plans, which will then be reviewed by a panel of judges that will include Donovan; several academics focused on environmental and design issues; and representatives from the American Society of Landscape Architects, the Urban Land Institute, and the American Institute of Architects. A recommendation will then be forwarded to Donovan, who will make the final decision.. The winning project will be eligible for Community Development Block Grant funding, though the final amount of the award has not been determined.

While one project will be selected, Ovink said that all 10 plans will be available, and local, state, and federal officials will be able to continue exploring whether they can be put into practice.

What follows are descriptions of the five New Jersey teams and their goals:

Coastal Commercial Financing : Asbury Park

HR&A – along with Cooper, Robertson & Partners; Grimshaw Architects; Alamo Architects; Langan Engineering; W Architecture; Hargreaves Associates; and Urban Green Council – is working on a design that will look to develop a new economic model for the Jersey Shore. The idea is to leverage rebuilding money to both create physical defenses and put in place better financing models that can help pay for the defenses and needed upgrades as the rebuilding effort moves forward.

Focusing on Asbury Park, which has 200,000 square feet of commercial, retail and entertainment, the team is looking for ways to generate more revenue for local businesses so that they can pay for the improvements that are needed.

The HR&A plan will create a set of design options and strategies that the city and the business community can use to protect themselves from future storms. And it also will seek ways to help the city expand its prime business season beyond the traditional three-month tourist season.

HR&A partner Jamie Torres Springer said his team’s plan is likely to have four components:

Building more organizational capacity for merchants, which could include expanding existing merchants associations and official business districts or creating new ones to ensure that there are officials in place dedicated specifically to building business and to making sure that businesses are ready for future weather events.

Building physical defense systems — which could take the form of new floodgates; installation of back-flow preventers to keep sewers from backing up; and elevating mechanical operations like heating and air-conditioning, computers, and other systems.

Creating new flood-prevention systems, which could include walls and hardened edges or other efforts, to prevent Deal Lake and Wesley Lake from flooding the city from the north and west.

Growing the retail economy and expanding it into the fall and winter months so that there is more money available to businesses to keep them viable and to help them pay for needed improvements.

The plan is currently in the early stages. Final details, including cost estimates, are not expected before March, but Springer and HR&A Director Ryan LeVasseur both said that there are many “opportunities for investment” in the city that build on the “rebirth along the waterfront” and along Cookman Avenue and the historic downtown.

“There is a great opportunity to leverage the recent (real estate) investments to strengthen the town’s overall economy,” LeVasseur said. “This is about getting people back to the Shore and getting people back more often in times when it is not the height of beach season. That will help make it more affordable to be more resilient.”

“This is something that will be important across the region,” Springer said. “If you are standing still, you are only trying to protect what you have. But if you are expanding, there are a lot of interesting design ideas and opportunities.”

New Meadowlands: Productive City and Regional Park

Kobi Ruthenberg, a design associate with the Center for Advanced Urbanism at MIT, says the Meadlowlands presents both a challenge and a unique opportunity for residential and commercial growth.

His team — a partnership of MIT CAU and the European design firms Zus and Urbanisten — is seeking to create a new master plan for the area, which would include a regional park that could serve as the Meadowlands’ central focus and a new mixed-use housing and commercial developments.

“The Meadowlands is very low, it is historically marshland, and it floods regularly without storms, so that when storms hit it is extremely vulnerable,” said Ruthenberg, the project leader. This is of significant concern, he said, because the region is home to “vital networks,” such as mass-transit and utilities infrastructure that are “crucial for the region.”

“That is why there is a lot at stake in terms of utility and infrastructure companies,” he said.

In addition, the region is badly contaminated because of its history as an industrial hub. Storm surges and more general flooding exacerbate this, because they dredge up the pollutants and cause them to spread.

That is why any plan for the Meadlowlands has to do more than prevent floods. The MIT team is looking at the problems of the Meadowlands through four lenses: development and economic development, ecology and water issues, infrastructure and transportation, and energy and utilities.

“Through these lenses, we are trying to maximize the potential of the Meadowlands as an urban area,” he said. “Instead of people thinking of it as a backyard, as a bad place, we are trying to change that and have them look at this as an asset, as a regional park and as a place to live next to and use for recreational purposes.”

Central to this vision, he said, is an expanded park concept, which would tie existing recreational areas together and create new recreational opportunities, but requires the clean up of polluted properties. How this will take place, Ruthenberg said, is under discussion.

“We are hoping it can transform into a real park and be programmed with civic functions,” he said. “But to do that, we need to increase accessibility and reduce the pollution. That could include local, site-specific work that needs to be done on each polluted site, and the development of a regional idea of how pollution can be reduced through manipulation of water dynamics.”

At the moment, he said, there is minimal control of water flow, which means that existing businesses and residents remain threatened and lessens the potential for future development.

The team is looking at how water flows in the greater Meadowlands region — which includes much of the eastern half of Bergen County and parts of Hudson County. One effort include looking at ways that different kinds of plants and other vegetation might absorb and redirect water and act as filters to remove pollutants, he said.

Cleaning the water and controlling its flow will allow for development of a larger park area and the potential for commercial and residential development along its boundaries. The specific outlines of the park have not been drawn and the locations for development have not yet been identified, he said.

“Industry will have and still has a large part” in the region’s future, he said. “The location and its proximity to Manhattan and to the New Jersey ports are crucial to the way goods move in the region.”

But residential development should also be a key component in a “more compact and more flexible” design that allows “residential and industrial uses to mix.” The goal is to create a more vibrant and economically diverse region that can sustain itself and afford the changes that will be necessary into the future.

“We are interested in productive landscapes and productive districts where you can imagine residential and light industry and warehousing in the same area,” he said.

The Hoboken Plan

The goal for Hoboken is resilience, according to a design team looking to protect Hoboken from future flooding. With sea levels rising, the two-square-mile city is expected to remain susceptible to flooding, which is why a team of designers and engineers led by Netherlands-based OMA is crafting a multipart master plan to help protect the city’s 50,000 residents and important regional facilities, using proven Dutch techniques.

The OMA team, which also includes Royal HaskoningDHV, Balmori Associates, and HR&A Advisors, chose Hoboken because it presented an intersection of important factors, said Daniel Pittman, lead designer for OMA on the project: It is prone to flooding, is densely populated, is loaded with regional assets like hospitals, schools and transit hubs, and also offers redevelopment potential.

“Our proposal looks at Hoboken as a whole city,” Pittman said, “and asks ‘what is the approach you can take to provide resilience on a city-wide scale.’”

Much of Hoboken was under water during and immediately after superstorm Sandy. That is because of the city’s geography, Pittman said. Hoboken was an island surrounded by marshland into the 1800s, when much of it was filled and eventually paved over and the city, a third of which is water, sits at sea level.

“That is the base condition and why you have these surges, the tidal and ocean flooding comes in from north and south and why flash flooding is concentrated in former marsh area,” he said.

The issue, Pittman said, is that the water comes into the city much more quickly than it can be discharged. So the approach OMA is using for the master plan, which was developed through discussions with local officials, is four-pronged, he said: Resist the water by creating natural or man-made sea walls; delay the movement of flood waters by redirection or absorption; store flood waters; and discharge the water.

The First Prong

The resistance prong will require floodwalls at the two main breach points, Weehawken Cove and Hoboken Station, though the city can make use of some of its existing infrastructure, Pittman said.

The redevelopment of Hoboken Station at the southern end of the city into a hardened, flood-resistance facility is a key element of the plan, Pittman said. The station would work with the nearby coastline, which would be built up and landscaped, to repel rising floodwaters and prevent a breach to the south.

To the north, redevelopment of parkland along Weehawken Cove could be used as a natural floodwall, with higher, landscaped elevations along the water to prevent a breach there.

The second prong would require both city and local residents to engage in smaller-scale projects that could slow rainwater, including construction of gardens designed to absorb rainwater or the use of so-called green roofs, which absorb some water and slow its runoff and delays its pooling in the streets.

The third prong builds upon this by creating a green belt around the city on unused train tracks. The belt would both direct water away from residential areas and act as storage until storms pass, he said.

In addition, the city could redesign underground parking and other facilities to serve as storage for water when major storms hit. It also could build water storage under its parkland and encourage local residents to put in place their own storage strategies.

Taken together, these efforts would be designed to slow the flow of water and allow for it to be pumped back into the river once storms pass, and they will be included in a master plan that it could be implemented over time and with the hope that the stakeholders – the residents and businesses — will make enough small changes to alleviate the need for massive infrastructure investment, he said.

“The point is there are things that can be done on many different scales,” he said. “And because of that, you can get to that final level of resiliency in a more efficient way.”

The Hoboken proposal has been mentioned in relation to the current scandal concerning allegations by Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer that Sandy aid was withheld from the city due to her lack of support of a downtown redevelopment project. Zimmer has expressed support for the Rebuild by Design effort, but has questioned whether the project will ultimately be supported by the Christie administration. While the competition is a federal effort, a HUD spokesman told the Associated Press that state officials would have some say over what projects move forward.

Jersey Shore: Resilience and the Beach

There is more than one Jersey Shore. That is the approach that the Sasaki team is taking to its resiliency plan for the state’s coastal regions.

Sasaki, an international planning and design firm based in Massachusetts, is working with the Arup engineering firm and the Rutgers University Institute of Marine and Coastal Science to develop a multipart plan for the Jersey Shore focusing on the Raritan Bay area at the north, Asbury Park in the center of the state, and the Barnegat Peninsula and Toms River in the south.

The beach and coastal typologies are not uniform, said Brie Hensold, a senior associate with Sasaki and project manager for the team, so the team decided it was important to consider various scenarios.

To the north, the focus is on the towns of Union Beach and Keansburg, which were flooded by both surges from the Raritan Bay and the overflow of neighboring creeks. The communities border Natco Lake, a manmade inland lake that the Sasaki team thinks can be the centerpiece of a flood-mitigation plan that also expands recreational opportunities for both communities. The plan involves potentially “reshaping” the bay coastline of both towns to lessen the potential for ocean surges.

The design also would turn the lake area into a fully functioning recreational area, with trails and boat access, Hensold said. The lake currently is underused, she said, and “part of the plan is to better integrate it” into the life of both communities.

The plan for Asbury Park also involves using several inland lakes to capture and store runoff, while also calling for rethinking the city’s boardwalk and making use of relatively wide local streets to manage water flow, Hensold said.

The lakes – Deal and Wesley – have a “very hard edge,” she said, meaning that the water meets the land without much to slow it should the lakes overflow. The team is considering ways, potentially using vegetation and landscaping, to soften that edge. The boardwalk’s edge, which runs in a straight line, could be altered and integrated with the dunes. The streets could be pitched differently and landscaped in a way to both slow water runoff and direct water to areas where it could be stored, she said.

As for the barrier islands — in this case a region encompassing Toms River, Berkeley Township, Seaside Heights and Park and some of the smaller towns in the area — Sasaki is exploring how the region’s tourism industry could be expanded geographically to include some of the inland communities.

“There is a lot of development on the barrier islands, a lot of second homes and they have a lot of different characteristics,” Hensold said. “And (the barrier islands are) tied to the tourism industry, which is important for local economy but also has an effect on state economy.”

Extremely Vulnerable

The region, however, has “extreme vulnerability to sea level rise,” she said. “People need to address this, so we are looking to diversity the tourism industry in that area and create more opportunity for tourism inland.”

Part of the plan will include finding potential opportunities for inland recreation (for trails, camping and boating, among other possibilities) and new transportation networks (bus rapid transit, water taxis, aerial trams) to connect the region to the barrier islands and the rest of the state.

“The beach is core to Jersey Shore culture, a central part, and that doesn’t go away, but we are looking at a more diverse set of options,” she said.

Offshore: Designing with Nature for the Future of the Mid-Atlantic Coast

A group of designers looking at the future of the coastline stretching from Rhode Island to the Delaware Bay is wondering if it is time for a new, manmade barrier reef to be built 10 miles out from the shoreline.

The designers, engineers, architects, and scientists with the WXY/West 8 team are investigating what they call a “big-scale” regional solution that would be consistent with the natural landscape while allowing for ecosystem restoration and other potential uses.

Claire Weisz — an architect with WXY and spokesperson for a team that also includes West 8, the Stevens Institute of Technology, Arcadis, Verisk, AIR and a number of other experts — said the purpose is “to understand if there is a regional solution that can have economic benefits both large and small.”

“New Jersey is particularly affected by storms and rising water, rising sea levels, because of its configuration,” Weis said. “The work we have been doing and will continue to do is to see if there is a larger-scale design solution that can lower the surge levels across the board.”

The manmade reef would be designed for multiple uses or “opportunities,” she said. The team is looking into how its impact on water flow and the tides might affect boating and other recreational uses, whether it could result in ecosystem renewal, and if it could house alternative energy generators like wind turbines. It would not be visible from the beach.

“The design approach is always to look at how everything can do more than one thing,” she said.

While the effort is a mult-state one, the impact on New Jersey would be immense, she said.

“To put it bluntly, New Jersey has a particularly vulnerable coastline with many complexities,” she said, adding that the “the exposure is significant” and is compounded by the angle of the shoreline.

“There is a huge amount of water exposure and wind and tides and everything else that affects the New Jersey shoreline, that also makes it the Jersey coast,” she said. “But there is a lot of risk and vulnerability.”

NJ Spotlight, Feb. 7, 2014

By Colleen O’Dea

More than 15 months after Superstorm Sandy, New Jersey has approved awarding little more than a quarter of the money available from the largest housing assistance program it established to help those most affected by the hurricane, and has actually paid out even less.

State officials established the Rehabilitation, Reconstruction, Elevation and Mitigation program using $600 million in federal aid to help homeowners repair or rebuild a primary residence.

Lisa Ryan, a spokeswoman for the Department of Community Affairs, said the state has signed grant awards amounting to more than $137 million of that money for about 1,200 applicants.

Of that amount, the state has actually provided $25 million in reimbursements for completed work.

But Ryan said it is the amount the state has agreed to distribute that paints the more accurate picture of aid from RREM because “the $137 million in grant assistance we have obligated is money that these homeowners can absolutely count on.”

The state has given out more money from the $180 million Resettlement program (RSP), sending checks of $10,000 each to nearly 16,700 homeowners, she said, with another 700 checks being processed.

That amounts to roughly $167 million distributed through RSP and a total of $174 million that the program is obligated to pay.

The RSP money is given to homeowners who agree to return to or remain in the county in which they lived prior to the storm if it was in one of the nine most impacted counties – Atlantic, Bergen, Cape May, Essex, Hudson, Middlesex, Monmouth, Ocean and Union.

Like RSP and RREM, the other two major programs for home owners — the Hazard Mitigation Grant and Sandy Homebuyer Assistance programs – are closed to new applicants.

In its action plan for spending $1.5 billion in additional federal disaster aid, the state proposes spending roughly half on housing programs, including putting an additional $390 million into the RREM program.

Fair Share Housing Center on Wednesday criticized the approval process for both RREM and the RSP, saying it had been “botched” by the state and the contractor it hired to administer the programs. The group released data it received last Friday from DCA that showed more than 75 percent of those who were initially rejected by the programs won appeals of their denials.

DCA blamed “inaccurate” data it received from the Federal Emergency Management Agency for the initial improper rejection of close to 2,000 home owners. But FEMA officials yesterday said they warned New Jersey officials that their damage assessment data was not meant to be used to determine eligibility for state housing assistance funds.

FEMA’s individual assistance data is used by the agency to provide quick relief to pay for basic repairs necessary to allow a person to return to a home. It does not provide a comprehensive assessment of total damage. The limitations of the data were made very clear when the numbers were given to state officials, who had requested it, FEMA officials said.

That at least some DCA officials knew that the FEMA data underestimates actual damage appears clear because the DCA’s first action plan for spending $1.8 billion in disaster block grant funding, submitted to the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development last March, says exactly that.

In noting FEMA’s Full Verified Loss estimate of about $733 million for the state, the plan described that figure as having been “derived from cursory FEMA inspection reports” and went on to state, “Previous disasters have shown that an FVL figure substantially underestimates the actual cost of rehabilitation and reconstruction. To estimate damage to owner-occupied units, HUD has previously adjusted FVL based on the ratio of SBA loans to FVL determinations to capture a more realistic estimate of repair costs.” Adam Gordon, a staff attorney with Fair Share, said the center told DCA about the problems inherent in using the FEMA data “as early as last April,” adding, “I can’t speak for why they ignored that.”

The data release brought calls for the state to re-assess more than 2,000 applicants initially denied funding who did not appeal the rejection, and for a thorough, independent review of the state’s handling of the programs.

Ryan’s estimates of money obligated and paid are slightly higher than what the database provided to Fair Share shows. That data was current as of Jan. 20, she said. An analysis of that data shows:

• Of roughly 5,150 applicants deemed eligible, about 1,000, or less than 1 in 5, had an award amount attached. These ranged from $3,498 to the maximum of $150,000 – designated for 332 of the properties – and totaled $108 million. Less than half of those, or 447 applicants, had a “paid amount” listed. Payments ranged from $73 to $150,000 and added up to just $15.2 million. The total amount set aside for the program was $600 million, according to the program’s website. Another 7,117 applicants were designated as “wait listed” for the program. • Of 20,242 people deemed eligible for the Resettlement program, the database indicates checks had been issued to 16,659, which would mean $166.6 million had been spent.

Ryan said it was easier for the state to allocate RSP money because “it is a non-construction program and there are no federal mandates requiring high levels of documentation and historical and environmental reviews – unlike the RREM Program.”

She said awarding of money through the RREM Program has taken much longer because “HUD requires eligible homeowners to jump through numerous federally mandated hoops – much of which we and Governor Christie have felt is unnecessary and redundant given that these are existing homes that cannot be built bigger than what was there before.”

No construction-based grants can be distributed through RREM until environmental and historic reviews have been completed and until it is shown that any money spent is not duplicating amounts received from private insurance, FEMA, the US Small Business Administration or other sources.

Ryan said DCA has assigned advisors to work with each of the 5,100 homeowners approved for receive an RREM award and “immediately schedule” an agreement signing once all the reviews are completed. Then applicants can begin construction work right away.

As of Jan. 20, those people living in ZIP codes along the hard-hit Jersey Shore in Monmouth, Ocean and Atlantic counties, had received the largest amounts of aid from RREM and RSP.

The largest amount of money, nearly $19 million, had been distributed to those living in the 08753 ZIP code of Toms River, where 47 homeowners had received $1.6 million from RREM and 1,739 had each gotten $10,000 from RSP. Another 63 homeowners had been promised another $9.7 million for rebuilding and another 258 had been deemed eligible for RSP funds but had not yet received a check.

Data available for those two programs for each ZIP code is available by clicking on that area on the above map.

NJ Spotlight, Feb. 6, 2014

By COLLEEN O’DEA

Report shows vast majority of homeowners won appeals after state corrected flawed damage estimates

Three-quarters of all those who appealed denial of federal Sandy aid from two popular housing assistance programs administered by the state of New Jersey wound up winning their appeals, raising new questions about the distribution of the funds.

As a result, the Cherry Hill-based Fair Share Housing Center, which yesterday released new data it received from the state Department of Community Affairs as the result of an Open Public Records Act request, charged that the contractor hired — and subsequently fired — by the Christie administration “botched” the entire process of providing aid.

The center called for an independent audit of the $600 million Reconstruction, Rehabilitation, Elevation and Mitigation program and the $180 million Resettlement program.

“When I see this scale of dysfunction, I can’t believe in the state doing the audit at this point,” said Adam Gordon, a Fair Share staff attorney. “It has to be someone who has independence.”

But Lisa Ryan, a DCA spokeswoman on Sandy recovery, said many of the initial denials resulted because the state had been using damage assessments from the Federal Emergency Management Agency that it found to be inaccurate. It sought and received approval from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to use applicants’ damage estimates from insurance companies or the U.S. Small Business Administration for their appeals and the result was the high success rate.

“DCA has ensured that anyone initially rejected received a thorough review of their application, resulting in reinstatement of eligibility and the award of recovery funds in every single eligible case,” she said.

According to Ryan, “several thousand” homeowners out of 40,000 who applied to the RREM and Resettlement programs were rejected because they did not meet eligibility requirements, one of which was that their residence had sustained at least $8,000 in damage due to Sandy. All of those deemed ineligible received a letter outlining the reason and stating they could appeal within 30 days, she continued.

“Noting the high number of ineligibility determinations, we investigated and learned FEMA provided the state with inaccurate damage assessment data,” said Ryan. “As a result, we obtained HUD approval to allow applicants to demonstrate damage through third-party sources other than FEMA data.”

FEMA officials could not be reached for comment.

According to an analysis of the Fair Share data, 789 of 1,069 people, or 73.8 percent, who appealed an RREM determination with either Hammerman and Gainer Inc., the firm the state had hired to manage the programs, or DCA, and 1,124 of 1,464 who appealed a Resettlement rejection – 76.8 percent – won their appeals and are now considered eligible for a grant. The Resettlement grants are $10,000 per home owner, while the RREM grants range up to $150,000.

Gordon called Ryan’s assertions about inaccurate FEMA data “new and interesting” but said they raised more questions.

“Why is that only coming to light now?” Gordon asked. “Did they hide it for the last seven months? Why didn’t (DCA Commissioner Richard) Constable even mention it as recently as a month ago in legislative testimony?”

The claim further bolsters Fair Share’s assertion that DCA should review all rejected applications, including those of people who did not file an appeal, Gordon said.

That call was echoed by the Housing and Community Development Network of New Jersey, a group of organizations and individuals that supports creation of housing and economic opportunities for low- and moderate-income residents.

“There’s too much at stake not to go through with that review,” said Nina Arce, a network spokeswoman. “Things have to be fixed. We know that and the governor knows that.”

According to the data, nearly 1,800 people deemed ineligible for Resettlement grants and almost 2,200 rejected for RREM money did not file any appeal. Fair Share said it’s “impossible to know from the data provided how many of those applicants” may have been eligible. It contends the appeals process was not clear and noted that, for several months, no information about appeals appeared on the Spanish-language version of the state’s Sandy recovery website.

"The Christie Administration’s widespread rejection of large numbers of families actually eligible for Sandy aid shows that the Sandy recovery process has been flawed from start to finish," Gordon said. "Who knows how many thousands more have been denied aid because the Christie Administration botched the process. Is this why HGI was fired? The public, especially those still out of their homes, deserve an answer. And people who were denied unfairly should not be barred from getting help with their homes because of the Christie Administration’s and HGI’s mistakes."

The Christie administration quietly terminated its three-year, $67.7 million deal with HGI last December, just seven months after signing the contract. State officials have not explained why they terminated the contract or who is running the programs now.

U.S. Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr. (D-9th District), also urged Gov. Chris Christie to reopen the RREM application process, which closed last Aug. 1, “so folks can get access to the help they need.” And he concurred with Gordon’s call for HUD to conduct independent monitoring in New Jersey, akin to audits done in the wake of Hurricane Katrina that found hundreds of millions of dollars in aid unaccounted for.

"Today’s revelations shed some light on just how grossly mishandled the largest Sandy housing program really was,” Pascrell said. “I’ve been saying from the start that the numbers just don’t add up.

“Furthermore, the excuses and lack of transparency need to end,” Pascrell said. “We need a full accounting of the HGI contract, and I urge HUD to require the appointment of an independent monitor before the next round of funding goes out to ensure there isn’t further mismanagement. The people of New Jersey deserve some answers.”

"What is Governor Christie hiding on HGI?" Gordon said. "Why hasn’t he come clean before with the fact that they apparently couldn’t perform the most basic task of their $68 million contract – determining whether people are eligible for Sandy aid? It’s good that HGI is now gone. But we need a full explanation of why HGI was fired. And then the administration and HUD have to clean up HGI’s mistakes."

He added that Christie also should explain why it gave HGI a more than $10 million "settlement" of litigation that may or may not have existed.

It’s especially important to get answers as the Christie administration moves forward with plans to use the next $1.4 billion in federal funds, as announced on Monday. Fair Share wants that action plan modified so that those “unfairly left out” of the current funding can get a chance to get compensation in the next round.

Arce criticized the new action plan as “pretty much a business-as-usual model that makes no fixes to the problems we have seen.”

Fair Share also called for investigation into questions about the distribution of Sandy recovery funds that were not designated for individuals but for communities.

Questions recently have been raised about the alleged distribution of Sandy aid for political purposes. For instance, $6 million was designated for a senior citizens center in Belleville, which suffered comparatively little damage. And Hoboken, several blocks of which were underwater due to the storm, received far less in aid from the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program Energy Allocation Initiative than communities that were relatively unscathed. That city’s mayor has charged that Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno threatened to withhold Sandy aid unless she pushed through a high-rise development represented by a Christie ally, a charge Guadagno denies.

RREM and Resettlement Program Statistics:

See Comments

Read more in Sandy

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ©2014 NJSPOTLIGHT

Budget Education Energy & Environment Healthcare More IssuesOpinion About Us Donate! Media Kit

NJ News Commons, Feb. 5, 2014

by Mary Mann

A second round of Sandy aid was announced by the State of New Jersey on Monday, February 3, and the Citizens Campaign wants to help you parse the information and solicit public comment.

Working with the New Jersey Recovery Fund, the Citizen’s Campaign will hold a conference call/webinar on Friday February 7 at 1 p.m.. Stacy McCormack from American Littoral Society and Kevin Walsh from Fair Share Housing Center will be on the call to provide more information about the plan and provide tips on testifying or submitting comments. Find out more about the webinar here.

Three public meetings will be held on February 11 from 4-7 p.m. at Richard Stockton College in Galloway, February 12 from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. at NJIT in Newark, and February 13 from 4-7 p.m. at Brookdale Community College in Lincroft.

Those interested in speaking at the public hearings must register online at sandy.publiccomment or by mail to the attention of Gabrielle Gallagher, NJ Department of Community Affairs, 101 South Broad Street, P.O. Box 800, Trenton, NJ 08625. All comments must be received on or before March 5, 2014, at 5:00 p.m. to be considered.

For more information about New Jersey’s Superstorm Sandy recovery efforts or to download a copy of the State’s Action Plan and related amendments, visit http://www.nj.gov/dca or request a copy at the above mentioned address. Both Action Plan Amendments (Substantial Amendments #6 and #7) are available on the DCA’s website http://www.nj.gov/dca.