NJ Spotlight, June 2, 2014

By Scott Gurian

Various factors suggest that state still has long way to go in aftermath of October 2012 hurricane

Nineteen months after Sandy, how far along are New Jersey and its residents in getting back on their feet? It’s clear that substantial progress has been made from the days when boardwalks were heaps of rubble and piles of sand and debris lined the streets.

But how much work remains to be done, and what challenges lie ahead? Here’s a sampling of 10 indicators providing snapshots of where the recovery stands at this point.

1. Distribution of aid money

Over one year after officials with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) approved New Jersey’s spending plan for the first $1.8 billion in Community Development Block Grant Sandy aid, less than one-quarter of that funding has been distributed. That’s according to the state’s latest performance review to the federal government, which notes that although $1.3 billion is “in the pipeline,” only $416 million had actually been disbursed as of March 31.

The Christie administration has blamed the delays on federal red tape, and it has said they’re constantly making changes to improve efficiency and get the money to Sandy survivors as quickly as possible. HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan was also quoted earlier this year saying that New Jersey was handing out aid dollars “faster than in any prior major disaster.” All things considered, state officials say they’ve made “tremendous progress” and “expect that this momentum will continue through 2014.”

2. Tax shortfalls

In the course of just a few hours, Sandy caused billions of dollars in losses to the tax bases of municipalities up and down the coast. Places like Mantoloking, Toms River, and Seaside Heights saw their ratables erode by as much as a third. As a result, tax collections in many communities were lower than usual last year. The blow was softened considerably by FEMA disaster loans and Essential Services Grants to municipalities. But it’s not known how long that funding will last, and towns could be in trouble if the aid dries up before they’re fully rebuilt.

3. Tourism figures

The Christie administration recently released a studyclaiming that 2013 tourism had broken previous records, but a closer look at the numbers doesn’t necessarily say that the Jersey Shore has rebounded. According to the data, two of the four shore counties — Ocean and Atlantic — both saw declines in tourism-industry sales, and most of the growth actually came from Morris County and other areas in the northern part of the state. In addition, a recent investigation by the Asbury Park Press found that beach badge sales — a key indicator of how many vacationers visit the shore — actually dropped in Monmouth and Ocean counties by $5.6 million. The paper noted that tourism officials relied heavily on revenue generated by the hotel occupancy tax, but the reason hotels were so booked may have been because they were filled with aid workers and residents left homeless by the storm. All eyes are watching to see how thing go this summer.

4. Housing and rental market

Sandy damaged nearly 350,000 homes across the state, including more than 15,000 rental units. A year and a half later, the current health of the coastal housing and rental market is one of the more mixed indicators on this list.

On the one hand, current trends appear to be positive. Prices in many places have dropped, and prospective buyers with financial means are rushing in, eager to scoop up properties at a discount.

Meanwhile the latest data from the Census Bureaushow that new home building permits are up 20 percent in Monmouth County and have more than doubled in Ocean County for the first quarter of this year.

The vacation rental website HomeAway.com reports that bookings for the Jersey Shore are already close to 70 percent higher than this time last year, an indicator that summer tourism could see a rebound.

But for working class residents of the Jersey Shore and those still struggling to recover from the storm, the picture isn’t so rosy. FEMA rental assistance for over 700 New Jersey families ran out at the beginning of last month, and some landlords are weary about accepting tenants through a state renter program, which is known for issuing late rent payments. Moderately-priced rental housing remains in short supply, and with the summer tourist season coinciding with aid money finally coming through for many Sandy survivors, those units that do exist will likely be too expensive for long-term stays by residents who need places to live while their homes are being elevated or rebuilt. Housing advocates are calling for the state to build more affordable rental units.

5. Infrastructure repairs

The NJ Department of Environmental Protection estimates that Sandy dumped hundreds of millions of gallons of raw sewage into the state’s waters and caused nearly $3 billion of damage to the state’s water system. The storm also damaged four power plants and 58 electrical substations, leaving 2.7 million customers in the dark. The damage came amid historic underinvestment in the state’s water and power utilities, which were already in desperate need of upgrades and repairs. Estimates suggest it could take $45 billion over the next two decades to fully repair New Jersey’s water and sewerage systems and make them more resilient. On the electric side, experts say the state needs to build more redundancy into the power grid, relocate switching stations away from the most vulnerable areas and install smart meters to allow utilities to more quickly pinpoint where outages occur. Such changes could take years to implement and cost billions of dollars. In the end, it’s New Jersey ratepayers who will get stuck with the bill.

6. Abandoned properties

Driving around many coastal towns today, it’s difficult at first glance to see the lasting effects of the damage Sandy caused, but a look into some windows will reveal many homes still gutted and vacant, as homeowners await the necessary funds to make repairs. Local officials in places like Brick and Middletown estimate hundreds of properties in their communities remain abandoned, but it’s hard to get a clear sense of just how widespread this is statewide.

Recognizing the problem, Gov. Chris Christie signed an executive order a few months ago allocating $15 million for demolition of unsafe and uninhabitable Sandy-impacted structures in the nine most-affected counties. So far, state officials have identified 20 communities to participate in the initial phase of the program.

7. Kinks in the recovery process

Almost from the start, New Jersey’s storm recovery has been tarnished by anecdotal complaints from Sandy survivors about confusion, misinformation, and bureaucracy that complicated the process of getting help to those who needed it. There were stories of different caseworkers giving different — and often conflicting — instructions to aid applicants. Some residents said they were asked to submit identical paperwork on multiple occasions and that forms they sent in were routinely misplaced. And after a recent town hall meeting in Belmar, one resident even told reporters that he had yet to receive any grant money, four months after signing documents officially awarding him the funds.

A recent federal audit found that one-quarter of all case files officials reviewed from applicants to the Reconstruction, Rehabilitation, Elevation and Mitigation (RREM) grant program had missing or misfiled documents or incomplete information. The administration says it’s in the process of cleaning up its files to ensure that every record is complete and accurate in its database.

8. Post-storm litigation

Storm survivors have filed close to 1,000 civil lawsuitsin connection with the storm, mostly involving flood insurance companies, but also including claims against contractors, local municipalities, and other parties. Judges predict there could be another 1,000 lawsuits on the way. It’s such a deluge that a committee of judges has established special procedures to try to avoid clogging the courts. In addition, many dissatisfied residents are winding their way through the state’s insurance mediation process. For people in this situation, a final resolution might still be a number of months away.

9. Public opinion

Recent surveys of New Jersey residents indicate that most people are not terribly optimistic about the progress of the state’s recovery. An Eagleton poll released in April found that just 8 percent of people think it will be complete within the next year, and nearly 60 percent said it could take up to five years. And a recent Monmouth University/Asbury Park Press pollfound that public satisfaction with the state’s recovery efforts had dropped below 50 percent for the first time, with nearly three quarters of respondents blaming state mismanagement rather than federal red tape.

10. Preparations for future storms

A year-and-a-half after Sandy, new and substantially damaged homes and businesses being rebuilt in flood zones are being elevated to comply with the new FEMA flood maps and to be less vulnerable to future storms. But an Army Corps plan to build dunes along the length of the state’s ocean coastline remains stalled for the time being by several hundred holdouts who are refusing to grant easements. Even if the dunes were built tomorrow, planners and environmentalists say there’s been little discussion of constructing natural dunes covered with vegetation, which would provide the best line of defense. Nor do they say has the state placed enough emphasis on predictions about sea-level rise, regional planning, or buyout strategies to move residents away from the most vulnerable areas of the Shore.

NY Times, May 30, 2014

By PATRICK McGEEHAN

New Jersey has agreed to spend more federal disaster money to provide housing to people displaced by Hurricane Sandy and to make sure that the hardest-hit parts of the state get a proportional share of the money, according to a settlement reached on Friday.

The state also agreed to reconsider all of the applications for reconstruction aid that were rejected, after a review found that more than three-fourths of them should have been approved. The agreement stemmed from complaints by civil rights groups filed last year with the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development.

“We have one more chance to get this right, and I am hopeful that this agreement will help the state do a better job,” said Frank Argote-Freyre, president of the Latino Action Network, one of the groups that filed the original complaint.

The Latino Action Network and the Fair Share Housing Center argued that minorities affected by the storm had not been treated fairly. The New Jersey chapter of the N.A.A.C.P. later joined in the complaint.

The agreement came after New Jersey learned that it would receive about $880 million in the third round of federal disaster-relief funding. The state has spent about $1 billion of the $4.2 billion promised to it.

In the settlement, the state agreed to spend an additional $215 million to provide replacement housing, on top of the $379 million it had already allocated for that purpose. Critics of the state’s handling of the federal aid, including the groups that filed the complaint, questioned why so much money was going to inland counties when so many people remained displaced in the counties along the Jersey Shore that suffered the brunt of the damage.

The settlement calls for more than half of the housing aid to be spent in Monmouth and Ocean Counties and an additional 20 percent to go to Atlantic County. It also would create a pool of $15 million to help renters, particularly those of low and moderate incomes, whose homes were damaged or destroyed.

“To the greatest extent feasible, households wishing to return to their pre-Sandy community with this assistance shall be supported and funded to do so,” the agreement says.

Adam Gordon, a lawyer with the Fair Share Housing Center who represented the groups, said the settlement “looks at a pretty wide swath of issues that really were impacting a lot of people of all races and all backgrounds.”

“I don’t expect this is going to fix all the problems,” Mr. Gordon continued, “but it addresses many of them.”

Climate Progress, May 27, 2014

BY JOE ROMM

Do we finally have the answer to the age-old (decade old?) question of what term is better for climate hawks to use: “global warming” or “climate change”?

In new polling by the Climate Change Communication efforts of Yale and George Mason, “global warming” is the winner — across the board:

“We found that the term global warming is associated with greater public understanding, emotional engagement, and support for personal and national action than the termclimate change.
“… the use of the term climate change appears to actually reduce issue engagement by Democrats, Independents, liberals, and moderates, as well as a variety of subgroups within American society, including men, women, minorities, different generations, and across political and partisan lines.”

Here’s an even more amazing finding: “Within the Weather category, global warming generates a higher percentage of associations to “extreme weather” than does climate change, which generates more associations to general weather patterns.”

So for all those who think the term climate change is more closely associated with extreme weather — I’m looking at you Wall Street Journal editors — think again.

Indeed, as that WSJ article shows, it is difficult to separate the question of which term is better from the doubly wrong claim by conservatives that progressives are allegedly now using the term ‘climate change’ because the planet has supposedly stopped warming. Of course, warming hasn’t actually stopped, it hassped up. Similarly the melting of the great ice sheets has accelerated. In fact, recent analysis makes clear that even surface air temperatures are rising faster than reported by the global temperature records, especially the Hadley Center’s (see “Faux Pause 2“):

“A new study by British and Canadian researchers shows that the global temperature rise of the past 15 years has been greatly underestimated. The reason is the data gaps in the weather station network, especially in the Arctic. If you fill these data gaps using satellite measurements, the warming trend is more than doubled in the widely used HadCRUT4 data, and the much-discussed “warming pause” has virtually disappeared.”

But since the deniers make up stuff about the science, why shouldn’t they make up stuff about everything else?

In fact it was the GOP’s spinmaster, Frank Luntz — the guy who pushed “death tax” to replace “estate tax” — who first urged conservatives to switch from “global warming” to “climate change” over a decade ago! Scientists, environmentalists, progressives, and frankly the whole darn planet have always used both terms — hence the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, established in 1988.

In a confidential 2003 memo, Luntz wrote (original emphasis):

“It’s time for us to start talking about “climate change” instead of global warming…
“1) “Climate change” is less frightening than “global warming”. As one focus group participant noted, climate change “sounds like you’re going from Pittsburgh to Fort Lauderdale.” While global warming has catastrophic connotations attached to it, climate change suggests a more controllable and less emotional challenge.”

D’oh! And as it turns out, at least according to the Yale polling, Luntz was right. Yale explains that “the term global warming is associated with”:

** Greater certainty that the phenomenon is happening, especially among men, Generation X (31-48), and liberals;

** Greater understanding that human activities are the primary cause among Independents;

** Greater understanding that there is a scientific consensus about the reality of the phenomenon among Independents and liberals;More intense worry about the issue, especially among men, Generation Y (18-30), Generation X, Democrats, liberals and moderates;

** A greater sense of personal threat, especially among women, the Greatest Generation (68+), African-Americans, Hispanics, Democrats, Independents, Republicans, liberals and moderates;

** Higher issue priority ratings for action by the president and Congress, especially among women, Democrats, liberals and moderates;Greater willingness to join a campaign to convince elected officials to take action, especially among men, Generation X, liberals and moderates.

So it would seem that global warming is the term to use (though other polling has found little difference between the two terms).

For the record, widespread use of the term “climate change” long predates Luntz’s memo, particularly in the scientific literature:

Indeed, the term “climatic change” goes back to a 1956 paper by Gilbert Plass, long-predating the use of “global warming” by climatologist Wallace Broecker in 1975.

I have always used both terms, though, as I’ve said many times, I prefer “Hell and High Water,” since it is more descriptive of what is to come. Others prefer “Global Weirding.” Whatever you call it, it ain’t gonna be pretty.

© 2005-2014 Center for American Progress Action Fund

Flyer May 25 MAB event.pdf

NJ Spotlight, May 15, 2014

A study of Medicare behavioral health data before and after superstorm Sandy shows a 5.8 percent increase in anxiety disorders; 7.7 percent increase in post-traumatic stress disorder; and an 8.1 increase in alcohol and substance abuse. The study, conducted by Healthcare Quality Strategies, Inc., reviewed Medicare fee-for-service recipients in the 10 counties most affected by Sandy.

Hispanics had the highest depression and/or proxy disorder rates, followed by whites and blacks, but Asians experienced the highest increase. Women were more affected than men.

Among the 10 counties reviewed by HQSI, Ocean County experienced the biggest increase in behavioral issues. It had the largest increase in depression (4.54 percent), largest increase in anxiety disorders (11.23 percent), largest increase in depression screening, and largest increase in the use of psychiatric diagnostic procedures (17.39 percent). It had an overall relative decrease (2 percent) in substance or alcohol abuse.

The state of New Jersey and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers are in the process of building protective dunes along the Shore and widening many of its beaches, hoping to protect the coastline more effectively from future storms.
Because those projects are bankrolled with federal Sandy relief funds, some say coastal communities taking the money should be forced to make sure all of their beaches are easily accessible to the public.
“We should make certain that public access is a part of what we do, as opposed to allowing towns to get public dollars, do the enhancements to their beach, but then not have the ability in a very real way for people to access the beach,” said state Sen. Jim Whelan (D-Atlantic County).
He’s sponsored a bill to require that the state’s shore protection projects include public access to the waterfront, including the "beach nourishment projects" that are a part of Sandy recovery.
“The public needs to be guaranteed access to the beaches that are built with that money,” agreed Tim Dillingham, director of the American Littoral Society, an organization focused on coastal issues.
Many New Jersey towns actively court residents from other parts of the state and beyond. They want tourists to come to their beaches and boardwalks, to buy beach tags and ice cream cones. So they try to make getting onto the beach easy with lots of access points, parking and bathrooms.
“And then there’s the other 40 percent of the coastline, which are in residential communities, which don’t want to have people who don’t live there come,” said Dillingham.
By way of example, he cites a handful of streets in Deal, N.J., north of Asbury Park, which dead-end into beaches. Many have landscaping or other barriers that block public access to the water and restricted parking. One ends with a waist-high cement wall.
Dillingham would like to see the town remove that wall and build a set of stairs to the beach, especially since the strip of sand below will be significantly wider once the Army Corps finishes a “beach nourishment” project here.
"So there’ll be a nice beautiful beach here that no one will be able to get to besides the people who live right next to it,” said Dillingham.
Whelan, D-Atlantic, expects his bill would only impact a handful of communities, though he declined to specify which communities need better access.
“The South Jersey Shore communities are pretty good [with respect to access],” he said. “The issue comes up a little more in some of the, frankly, more upscale communities in northern Jersey, where they have had more limited access to the beach.”
State plan offers towns flexibility
Larry Ragonese, a spokesman for the Department of Environmental Protection, counters that the state already has a good public access plan; it’s only a year and a half old and gives towns the flexibility to decide what kind of access to offer. The New Jersey courts stuck down a previous law which mandated access at prescribed intervals.
“Instead of government coming in and slamming down the hammer and saying you must put this, in every 30 yards you must have something, we said, ‘Hey, Town X, what makes sense for you?’” said Ragonese.
Efforts to improve access stalled last year while the state was so focused on rebuilding from Sandy, he admitted. But the DEP is working on it, Ragonese said, citing new access, parking, and bathrooms in Loveladies, on Long Beach Island, for example. Linden just submitted a new access plan for the DEP’s review.
“If a town doesn’t provide real access, of course, we always have the option of taking legal action against the town,” said Ragonese. “They’re required to provide public access and good public access.”
But he thinks that by giving the communities a say in the planning, it won’t come to that.
Dillingham, with the Littoral Society, doesn’t agree.
“They really have tried to bait and switch very strong, legally enforceable requirements to provide public access with a very soft program that is voluntary and puts responsibility in the hands of people in these towns who have been hostile to put access for years and years,” he said.
Whelan’s bill is currently under review by the Senate Banking Committee, but its chances are still uncertain. Gov. Chris Christie vetoed a similar bill last year.

BOSTON REVIEW, May 6, 2014

Deaths before age 75 from conditions that can be effectively treated. (Source.)

Climate Change Will Make Breathing in Summer Harder: Study

THURSDAY, May 8, 2014 (HealthDay News) — Summertime ozone air pollution levels in the United States could rise 70 percent by 2050 due to climate change, according to a new study.
That means that nearly all regions of the continental U.S. will have at least a few days of unhealthy air during the summers. But heavily polluted areas in the East, Midwest and West Coast that already have many days with high ozone levels could be faced with unhealthy air for most of the summer.
"It doesn’t matter where you are in the United States — climate change has the potential to make your air worse," study lead author Gabriele Pfister, a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., said in a center news release.
"A warming planet doesn’t just mean rising temperatures, it also means risking more summertime pollution and the health impacts that come with it," she added.
The ozone that surrounds Earth in the stratosphere is protective, helping to keep the sun’s ultraviolet radiation from causing problems on Earth. Ground-level ozone is different, according to the center’s news release. It forms as a result of chemical reactions from compounds that occur naturally and those produced by man, such as emissions from coal burning.
Ground-level ozone can cause a number of health problems, such as coughing and throat irritation. Ozone can also aggravate the lungs of people who already have trouble breathing, such as those with asthma, bronchitis and emphysema. Pollution from ozone can also damage farm crops and other plants, according to the news release.
The news isn’t all bad, however. The researchers’ computer model also showed that a steep decline in emissions of certain pollutants would result in much lower ozone levels even as temperatures rise due to climate change.
"Our work confirms that reducing emissions of ozone precursors would have an enormous effect on the air we all breathe," Pfister said.
The study was published online in the Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres.
More information
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention outlines the health effects of climate change.
SOURCE: National Center for Atmospheric Research, news release, May 5, 2014
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NJ Spotlight, May 7, 2014

By JON HURDLE

Study by group of scientists and other experts offers specific forecast of extreme weather’s impact on Northeast, rest of U.S.

New Jersey and the rest of the nation’s Northeast are already experiencing the effects of climate change and can expect more heat waves, downpours, floods and storms in the future, according to a major national report issued on Tuesday.

The National Climate Assessment said that longstanding predictions of climate change are now a reality, causing seas to rise, precipitation patterns to shift and temperatures to soar, with resulting damage to infrastructure, homes and human health.

“This report shows that climate change is here and now, and matters to each one of us no matter what part of the country we live in,” Katharine Hayhoe, director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech and a contributor to the report, said during a conference call with reporters.

The report was written by the U.S. Global Change Research Program, a collaboration of 13 federal departments and some 300 scientists and other experts. The program was initiated during the administration of President George H.W. Bush.

Northeast temperatures rose an overall 2 degrees Fahrenheit between 1895 and 2011 while precipitation increased by 10 percent, or about 0.4 inch a decade, the report said. The region’s seas have risen about a foot, or 4 inches more than the global average, since 1900.

By mid-century, New Jersey and surrounding states can expect to have 60 more days per year when temperatures exceed 90 degrees Fahrenheit than they did at the end of the 20th century.

By the 2080s, the average temperature for the Northeast region is expected to rise by 4.5 to 10 degrees if global carbon emissions continue to rise at the current rate, but a substantial cut in emissions could limit the temperature increase to 3 to 6 degrees, the report said.

Less than a week after a record-breaking rainfall in some areas of the mid-Atlantic, the report forecast a continuing increase in extremely heavy downpours. It noted that between 1958 and 2010 there was a 70 percent increase in the amount of rain that fell during such downpours.

And, some 18 months after Sandy, the study projected increased coastal flooding as a result of sea-level rise, even without storms.

“Sea-level rise of two feet, without any changes in storms, would more than triple the frequency of dangerous coastal flooding throughout most of the Northeast,” the report said.

It noted that global sea levels are expected to rise 1 to 4 feet by 2100, depending on the rate at which the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets melt. But, as already projected by Princeton-based researcher Climate Central and others, the increase in New Jersey and other mid-Atlantic states will be greater, mostly due to land subsidence.

It said individual hurricanes like Sandy can’t be directly attributed to climate change but called them “teachable moments” that show the region’s vulnerability to extreme storms.

The region will also experience increased river flooding because of more severe rainstorms, the report said. It focused only on the United States, and followed two global reports from the UN’s International Panel on Climate Change earlier this year.

Infrastructure at risk from rising waters includes airports, roads and rail lines. A 2 -foot rise in sea level in New York – entirely possible before the year 2100 — would flood or render unusable more than 200 miles of road, some 700 miles of railroad tracks and 539 acres of airport runway, the report said. It said effects would be similar in low-lying areas of other states.

In the Northeast, heat waves are likely to be especially dangerous to vulnerable populations such as the elderly, the very young, and the poor, the report said. The highest temperatures will be felt in the region’s big cities, where ground-level ozone and other pollutants are likely to lead to increased hospitalizations, it said.

By the 2080s, heat-related deaths in Manhattan are expected to be 50 percent to 91 percent higher than they were in the 1980s, the report said, citing one study.

People who live in coastal areas are particularly vulnerable to storms and sea-level rise, the report said. It noted that 1.6 million Northeast residents live in areas defined by the Federal Emergency Management Agency as 100-year flood zones – where coastal flooding is deemed to have a 1 percent chance of happening in a given year – and that 63 percent of those people live in New Jersey or New York.

It predicted that people in the 100-year zone will experience more frequent floods, and that those who currently live outside the zone will find themselves within it. Across the region, between 450,000 and 2.3 million people are at risk from a 3-foot rise in sea level, the report said.

Hurricane Sandy offered a painful preview of the devastation wrought by bigger storms, and their effects will be amplified by higher sea levels, the report said.

Dr. Radley Horton, a research scientist at Columbia University and the lead author of the study’s chapter on the Northeast, called the report the “most comprehensive” national climate assessment ever released.

“It needs to speak to all Americans because one of its key points is that we are already seeing the effects of climate change,” he told reporters. The effects are directly linked to a 40 percent increase in greenhouse gases brought about by human activity since the start of the industrial revolution, he said.

The Northeast is particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change because of its aging infrastructure, such as Interstate 95, Amtrak rail lines and numerous electrical substations, Horton said.

“As sea levels rise, we are going to see these multiple system failures,” he said. “If part of that electrical system goes down, it will impact our ability to pump water out of the subway.”

The predicted increase in heavy downpours is also a threat to rural areas of the Northeast where infrastructure, agriculture and towns are clustered in valleys, and are especially vulnerable to flooding, Horton said.

Despite the dire predictions, the Northeast has begun to work on how to adapt to climate change, Horton said. He said all but two of the region’s states now have climate action plans, cities are developing heat action plans, and some local governments and residents are taking practical measures like elevating coastal houses.

New Jersey does not have a climate action plan.

“Mitigation strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to adapt to climate change are well under way in the region,” Horton said.

But he warned that authorities are only just beginning to work on the problem.

“We need to emphasize that implementation of all these strategies is at a very early stage,” he said.

Horton and other co-authors called for a move away from fossil fuels and toward alternatives such as wind and solar to reduce carbon emissions and lessen the effects of climate change in the future.

“All is not lost,” said Hayhoe of Texas Tech. “The choices that we are making today will determine the changes and the impacts that we will live through in the future.”

Climate Central’s Ben Strauss, whose group in April published an updated online tool to gauge the localized effects of sea-level rise across New Jersey, said the federal report moves climate change from the future to the present.

“This report really highlights that the impacts of climate change are already with us now, and they affect people in every part of the nation,” he said.

Environmentalists seized on the report as an opportunity to renew their calls for New Jersey to re-enter the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, an effort to cut regional carbon emissions, from which New Jersey exited in May 2011.

“As we approach the third anniversary of Gov. Christie’s decision to pull us out of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative … the time for action is now to deal with global warming pollution in New Jersey,” said Doug O’Malley, director of Environment New Jersey.

Jeff Tittel, director of the New Jersey Sierra Club, accused Gov. Christie of denying climate change, and said the governor has cut emissions-reduction goals in the state’s Energy Master Plan while closing the state’s office of climate change.

“It’s time for Governor Christie to accept that climate change is real and to start tackling the issue instead of pleasing the Koch brothers,” Tittel said, in a reference to the prominent Republican Party donors.

Neither Michael Drewniak, a spokesman for Gov. Christie, nor Jim Benton, executive director of the New Jersey Petroleum Council, responded to requests for comment.

Al Jazeera America, Apr. 30, 2014

MARK WILSON/GETTY IMAGES

Thousands of Sandy’s victims are left without federal aid, and still waiting on money from New York and New Jersey

by Peter Moskowitz

A year and a half after Hurricane Sandy hit the New York metropolitan area, destroying tens of thousands of homes, Barbara Vahey is stuck between a rock and a hard place. More specifically, she’s stuck in a funding gap between the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the bureaucratic black hole of local housing recovery programs.

Vahey, 52, had her house in Island Park, on Long Island, destroyed by the storm. She still can’t afford to bring it up to new flood standards that would enable her and her husband to either move back in or sell up.

After brief stints living with different family members, Vahey has been in a rental apartment on the other side of town since July with the help of funding from FEMA. But as of May 1, that assistance will run out and Vahey has nowhere to go.

“I have a $100,000 mortgage with Chase on the house, plus I’m paying taxes and insurance, so I can’t walk away,” she said. “I’ve been waiting for [state funding] to rebuild since it first started last April … now I’m in limbo.”

Vahey isn’t alone. She’s one of 1,300 New York and New Jersey families who until May 1 had been relying on FEMA rental assistance to get them through the last 18 months as they rebuilt their houses or found alternative living arrangements.

In theory, those 18 months should have been enough — FEMA’s programs are designed to hold people over until state- and city-level programs kick in. But housing advocates say that New York’s and New Jersey’s programs have been poorly managed and mired in red tape, leaving people like Vahey without enough money to rebuild their own houses or find a new one.

“The problem is the [local] rental programs aren’t really up and running yet,” said Kevin Walsh, the director of the Fair Share Housing Center in New Jersey, which has helped Sandy victims with legal issues since the storm. “FEMA’s assumption is that the local systems are in place. While that should be a safe assumption, in this case it’s the wrong assumption.”

A total of 137,928 households received funding from FEMA after the storm, according to FEMA figures. The vast majority of those were in New York and New Jersey.

Barbara Vahey and her dog at the Walk a Mile in Our Shoes rally for Sandy relief funds in March. Barbara Vahey

As of April, New York State still had 589 households on FEMA’s rental assistance rolls, down from 90,944 in the months immediately following the storm. New Jersey still had 711, down from a high of 44,592.

But those numbers represent only a fraction of the actual unmet need in the two states, according to Walsh and other housing advocates. Walsh said that in addition to those who were on FEMA aid, there are thousands of others who are currently receiving no federal aid and have been waiting for state aid for months.

“The main issue we see is that, had the local programs worked, everything would be fine now,” said Fazeela Siddiqui, an attorney at the Legal Aid Society’s Queens office. “FEMA’s done, but now everyone needs more time.”

The problems with the programs run by New York state, New York City and New Jersey are myriad, advocates say. They range from lost paperwork to confusing instructions on applications for aid, from language barriers between applicants and administrators to slow processing times.

New York City’s Sandy recovery program, Build It Back, is now being audited by the state comptroller, Scott Stringer.

“It disturbs me greatly there are 20,000 people on a waiting list and six homes have been rebuilt,” Stringer said recently. “This has gone on way too long.” And after months of criticism over New Jersey’s program, state lawmakers promised on Tuesday that aid would come quicker.

But for people like Vahey, quicker isn’t quick enough.

Vahey’s current rent is $2,200. She’s searched for something cheaper, but there’s nothing available that accepts dogs, and Vahey has been her son’s de facto dog sitter while he completes a tour of duty as a Marine. She’ll now have to pay that rent without the $1,500 a month from FEMA. She says that’s nearly impossible on her public school administrator’s salary and the money her husband earns from driving a bread truck 15 hours a day.

But even though her rent is too high, Vahey can’t move back home.

She said it’d cost nearly $100,000 to raise her small house high enough to meet the state’s new requirements. Without raising it, she can’t sell it — meaning she’s stuck paying a $100,000 mortgage, property tax and flood insurance for a house she can’t live in, in addition to the $2,200 a month she’s paying in rent.

She’s still waiting for the state to process her year-old application for money to help raise her home, or to buy it out so she can pay off the mortgage and move.

Until then, she said, she’s stuck waiting, and quickly racking up debt.

“There are thousands of us. We’re all struggling to survive because we’re not getting the money dedicated to Sandy,” she said. “I don’t know what they’re waiting for. The stress is unbelievable … I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to do this.”