1400 sunken boats in Barnegat Bay

[Vince_nj1]

Update on the clean up of NJ Waters;

"Hopefully, things will improve in the next few months as a massive debris cleanup of Barnegat Bay and waterways from Raritan Bay all the way down to the bottom of the state gets underway, Ocean County Administrator Carl W. Block said tonight. "The target is to have 75 percent of the debris out by June," he said. "While it's an ambitious target, they are trying to make sure there's a summer season." Full article: http://brick.patch.com/articles/barnegat-bay



The water was exceptionally low today, so I took a ride over the Mantoloking Bridge to see if there was any obvious debris sitting out in the channel. Unfortunately the railing blocked most of the view. I was driving and filming at the same time, so the footage isn’t the best but I thought I would share it. I was worried about being stopped, because they do not want people sightseeing in the neighborhood. You can see the police pulled someone over in the video.

[video=youtube;yXkRkdlqscQ]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXkRkdlqscQ&feature=youtu.be[/video]

 

[vandal]

You are luckey they did not see your camera they have been threatning to stop withn them for gauking at the rich and people from Brick are not welcome over there.

 

[rondds]

Great footage Vince. Wow. Wow. Is it an illusion or does the landscape get less decimated as you moved north? I can't believe how many areas there are that you can now see right to the ocean from the road.

 

[Vince_nj1]

Great footage Vince. Wow. Wow. Is it an illusion or does the landscape get less decimated as you moved north? I can't believe how many areas there are that you can now see right to the ocean from the road.

Ron

Not an illusion. As you get closer to Bay Head the damage appears to be less. However RT 35 is no longer the first street behind the ocean front homes, so it is difficult to see those homes. If you go South on 35, the damage is still pretty close to what you can see on the video I posted earlier.

Very sad situation.

 

[dicor]

If you boat on Barnegat It's worth the read.


Barnegat Bay cleanup target: Storm-tossed boats
​

For boaters who have not yet brought home their wayward vessels lost in superstorm Sandy, now would be a good time.
State Police and the state Department of Environmental Protection have dramatically stepped up the pace of collecting unclaimed boats scattered by the Oct. 29 storm surge, as the state aims to clear Barnegat Bay and other major waterways in time for the summer boating season. DEP officials say those operations will include dredging the bay of sand that Sandy stripped off ocean beaches, at the very least clearing major channels. The full extent of dredging needs — from lower New York Harbor south to Cape May and up to the Delaware Memorial Bridge — is not clear yet.“These are uncharted waters. The state has never undertaken this kind of effort,” said Larry Ragonese, a DEP spokesman.The boat clearing operation by storm cleanup contractor AshBritt and State Police began last week and should be wrapped up by the end of January, Ragonese said. Watch the videos at the top of this story to see the Sandy damage in the Mantoloking area, near the bay. If you're using our mobile app, watch a video here“Our obvious first choice is to get people to retrieve their boats,” said Lt. Steve Jones, a State Police spokesman. “As a last resort, boats that may impact waterways and the bay are being removed.”“We want to get that done first so we can move on to the next phase” of debris removal, Ragonese said. There’s a Feb. 1 target date to request contractors’ quotes and enter contracts for finding and removing sunken pieces of houses, cars and appliances washed out of homes. “Then we’re looking at removing sand from Barnegat Bay, inlets and lagoons,” he said. Unclaimed boats are parked at a former shopping center site on Route 70 in Brick, also the site of a storm debris collection point. Dow Knight, a senior vice president with AshBritt, said the company initially got a priority list of 150 derelict boats for removal “but the numbers are going to be significantly less” as more owners are contacted.For boaters who have not yet brought home their wayward vessels lost in superstorm Sandy, now would be a good time. State Police and the state Department of Environmental Protection have dramatically stepped up the pace of collecting unclaimed boats scattered by the Oct. 29 storm surge, as the state aims to clear Barnegat Bay and other major waterways in time for the summer boating season.DEP officials say those operations will include dredging the bay of sand that Sandy stripped off ocean beaches, at the very least clearing major channels. The full extent of dredging needs — from lower New York Harbor south to Cape May and up to the Delaware Memorial Bridge — is not clear yet.

“These are uncharted waters. The state has never undertaken this kind of effort,” said Larry Ragonese, a DEP spokesman. The boat clearing operation by storm cleanup contractor AshBritt and State Police began last week and should be wrapped up by the end of January, Ragonese said. Watch the videos at the top of this story to see the Sandy damage in the Mantoloking area, near the bay. If you're using our mobile app, watch a video here

“Our obvious first choice is to get people to retrieve their boats,” said Lt. Steve Jones, a State Police spokesman. “As a last resort, boats that may impact waterways and the bay are being removed.”
“We want to get that done first so we can move on to the next phase” of debris removal, Ragonese said. There’s a Feb. 1 target date to request contractors’ quotes and enter contracts for finding and removing sunken pieces of houses, cars and appliances washed out of homes. “Then we’re looking at removing sand from Barnegat Bay, inlets and lagoons,” he said.
Unclaimed boats are parked at a former shopping center site on Route 70 in Brick, also the site of a storm debris collection point. Dow Knight, a senior vice president with AshBritt, said the company initially got a priority list of 150 derelict boats for removal “but the numbers are going to be significantly less” as more owners are contacted.
Three months after Sandy and barely two months before the start of its spring season, the Shore’s boating industry is feeling intense pressure. Many marina owners say they don’t have the financial resources to repair wrecked docks, and the best the federal government has offered so far is Small Business Administration loans, at rates that fishermen and marina owners say are not competitive with private-sector banks.
An attempt by fishing industry advocates to get emergency federal grants to rebuild commercial fishing docks and recreational marinas was torpedoed in Congress, when a conservative faction in the House Republican majority objected to including aid for previous fishery collapses in Alaska and on Mississippi’s Gulf of Mexico coast, in what had been proposed as a $150 million package. Sens. Frank Lautenberg and Robert Menendez, both D-N.J., have asked the Obama administration for additional aid for the fisheries, saying that, the industry is in desperate need of help.
On top of it all, New Jersey boat dealers who worked at the New York Boat Show earlier this month were alarmed to hear visitors declare they will not come to the Shore this summer, believing Barnegat Bay to be wrecked — not unlike the perception that Atlantic City is fighting nationally, against bogus reports that Sandy destroyed the resort’s oceanfront.
So the Christie administration says it’s making bay cleanup its next priority. “We’re trying to get as much out as we can before summer,” Ragonese said.
That will be a welcome sight to bayside homeowners like Ed Hoffman of Toms River, who says his Windsor Drive neighborhood has been flooding repeatedly since Sandy. He and his neighbors wonder if debris and sand in the bay and its western shore lagoons are playing a role in the storm tides now.
“The boats should have been out of the water weeks ago,” Hoffman said. After seeing high storm tides in December and again with the January new moon, Hoffman says many people in the neighborhood have put their repairs on hold.
“If we have a three-day nor’easter our houses are going to be flooded again, just like Sandy,” he said. “We’re on the edge of our seats waiting for these dredging boats to show up.”
Jon Miller, a coastal engineer and assistant professor with the Davidson Laboratory at Stevens Institute of Technology, said he agrees with scientists who say tide heights in the ocean are still the primary driver of bay tides, not new sandbars.
“That’s not going to affect tides in the bay,” Miller said.
But wave heights and patterns on top of those tides might be different now, because of changes to the bay’s depths and bottom contours, Miller suggested.

Kirk Moore:
732-557-5728; kmoore@njpressmedia.com