Hurricane Sandy’s impact on the Borough of Mantoloking, NJ, October 2012

Abstract

Hurricane Sandy hit Mantoloking, New Jersey, 29 October 2012, heavily damaging both residential and municipal infrastructure located on a barrier spit extending south from Manasquan Inlet in Ocean County, NJ. Due to the storm, residential property values dropped by $528.3 million and more than $5 million in recovery expenses were incurred by the borough. The Herbert Avenue inlet breach severed all infrastructure and critical services to the rest of the peninsula with the Federal Highway Administration, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP) and the New Jersey Department of Transportation (NJDOT) bearing $265 million to restore State Highway 35, including $23.8 million to install a vertical steel bulkhead along 3.5 miles of oceanfront shoreline. In addition, individual oceanfront residential owners living north of Lyman Street spent between $48,000 and $72,000 each on a rock revetment linking the steel wall with a pre-existing rock revetment which ended in Bay Head, the neighboring community to the north. The oceanfront owners formed an alliance allowing them to contract as a group for this project. Finally, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Philadelphia District, entered into an agreement with the State of New Jersey to construct a dune 14 miles long and 22 feet high (NAVD 88) with between a 75- and 220-foot-wide berm seaward of that dune between Seaside Park in the south and Point Pleasant Beach just north of Bay Head. This project was completed in Mantoloking in 2019 with an initial construction cost of $122.05 million. This project’s commitment is for 50 years after the Corps and New Jersey signed the state aid agreement extending into 2065.