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Health & Fitness

Flooding Near Former Inlets

On October 14th, the Rutgers Climate Institute held a conference about “Informing the Response to Hurricane Sandy and Implications for Future Vulnerability’’, that was reported by Kirk Moore in the Asbury Park Press. In his blog Bill Wolfe pointed out a challenging insight by professor Michael Kennish that concluded the article:

"Back-bay areas will be New Jersey’s “Achilles’ heel” ... They have no really good way to protect against back-bay flooding.”

The bays may be filling up with runoff during sustained downpours because the majority of the natural inlets have been closed; and the ocean is still following these old pathways inland during storm surges.

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Besides Sandy Hook Channel, there are only two inlets north of the Barnegat Inlet - the Manasquan and the Shark Rivers - but in the past there were as many as twenty one. Now there are only eleven along the entire coast of NJ, according to the Coastal Research Center at Stockton State College.

Monmouth County property records from the 1600’s indicate that the shoreline has already retreated as much as 2000 feet since about 1650, according to the Coastal Research Center. Cores of the seafloor a few hundred feet off the coastal lakes in Monmouth County – all former inlets - have revealed the remnants of saltwater marshes: the peat deposits of the ancient white cedar trees that had existed before the ocean moved inland, following the low areas along stream channels.

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Some of the areas along the ocean coastline that were most devastated by Super Storm Sandy were former inlets. The Metedeconck River Inlet, just above Mantoloking across from the Metedeconck River, has been closed since 1775, according to lists in "New Jersey Shore Protection Master Plan Volume 1", written by the N.J. Department of Environmental Protection, and the book Down the Jersey Shore. The ocean broke through the Perch Pond and Three Corner Pond inlets, known today as Silver Lake and Lake Como, inundating Belmar and the borough of Lake Como.

Hazard mitigation planning may consider whether communities in watersheds upstream of former inlets need to reduce the volume of runoff from their developed areas since it is intensifying the flooding downstream.

Going north to south, closed or former inlets in Monmouth County that may be prone to flooding during the “current interglacial period” are:

Navesink River/Plum Island, near Highlands bridge by Sandy Hook

Shrewsbury River Inlet, off Monmouth Beach

Whale Pond Inlet (Takanassee Lake), Long Branch

Elberon Brook/Pond Inlet, Long Branch

Brook (Poplar Brook), Deal

Deal Lake Inlet, Asbury Park

Sunset Lake Inlet, Asbury Park

Long Pond (Wesley Lake), Neptune Township

Goose Pond Inlet (Fletcher Lake), Bradley Beach

Duck Creek Inlet (Sylvan Lake), Avon

Perch Pond/Silver Lake Inlet, Belmar

Three Corner Pond Inlet (Lake Como)

Fresh Pond Inlet (Spring Lake)

Sea Girt Inlet (Wreck Pond),

Newberry Pond Inlet (Stockton Lake), Manasquan

(List Adapted From Table I.C-4 in NJDEP, 10/1981; and Bilby, 2008; Roberts and Youmans, 1993; Dahlgren, 1977).

Water Under the Bridge

The NJDEP report advises that the Navesink River Inlet was closed by the railroad in 1856, probably referring to the Long Branch and Sea Shore Railroad, which began operating from Spermaceti Cove in Sandy Hook to Long Branch in 1865. Around 1896, the inlet broke through and discharged directly into the ocean near the present day entrance to Sandy Hook, where thee had been an amusement park named Sandlass Beach. Plum Island near Parking Lot A is the remnants of this inlet. In 1778, as the British were retreating from the Battle of Monmouth, they built a pontoon bridge over the inlet by Plum Island so they could evacuate by ship to Manhattan, according to Atlantic Highlands – From Lenape Camps to Bayside Town by Paul Boyd. The breach was sealed again around 1900-1901. Flooding continues to occur across the access road to the park. In 1988, a steel bulkhead wall was built along the road in the "critical erosion zone" between Plum Island and Spermaceti Cove as part of a sand replenishment project. The Shrewsbury River discharged directly into the ocean in 1685 near the Shrewsbury Rocks, the popular fishing and diving spot in the ocean off Monmouth Beach across from the Rumson-Fair Haven peninsula. This inlet was also closed by the railroad 1856.

The Elberon Brook/Pond Inlet was apparently located between Lake Takanassee (Whale Pond) in Long Branch and Poplar Brook in Deal. It may have been what was once the northern tributary of Poplar Brook, as drawn on an 1868 map on the Rutgers Special Collections and Archives webpage. This has since been piped and redirected so that it presently discharges into the ocean from a eight foot diameter outfall at the Elberon Beach Club, rather than by the mouth of Poplar Brook. The underground tributary runs to the south of the Church of the Presidents, which is the home of the Long Branch Historical Museum Association, which has generously provided these insights. The headwaters of the northern tributary may have began as far west as the train trestle in Elberon, where the dip in the road under the tracks floods in heavy rains, as recently as August of 2013 in the Asbury Park Press. The 1868 map shows that this tributary is the "meets and bounds" that separates Elberon from Deal. The 1848 map also shows that there had been a southern tributary of Poplar Brook as well.

Poplar Brook in Deal is the last freshwater stream on the East Coast with a direct, unchanneled discharge onto an ocean beach, as reported by Kirk Moore in an article in 2000 about the Deal Lake outfall, that also noted beach replenishment plans included building an outfall pipe.

The Sea Girt Inlet, is now called Wreck Pond, also known as Rack or Wrack Pond, for seaweed, not shipwrecks, according to Sea Girt NJ. A Brief History.

In 1775, the old mouth of the Manasquan River, the Newberry Pond Inlet, opened to the Atlantic near Stockton Lake, about 1.5 miles north of where it is today, according to a report by the Manasquan Watershed Management Group. 

A Role for Low Impact Development

The Jersey Shore is anything but static. During the last Ice Age 11,700 years ago, it was as far east as the Hudson Canyon; during the Cretaceous Period (145.5 to 65.5 million years ago), as far west as Scranton, according to a USGS webpage. Hazard Mitigation planning for sea level rise along the coast may terminate with storm surge barriers and abandonment, but reducing the amount of stormwater that a community collectively creates by draining some of it into the ground could significantly take the pressure off in the intervening decades. In 2008, the Monmouth County Office of Geographic Information Systems predicted that one inch of rain produces about 3 million gallons of runoff just from the roofs on buildings east of Route 71 in Spring Lake, Spring Lake Heights, and Sea Girt.

The downpours expected from Climate Change, as well as the ones delivered by Hurricane Floyd in 1999 and Irene in 2011, are wake-up calls that reducing stormwater volume in developed areas needs to be part of a strategy to manage regional flooding. This is why both the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the USEPA recognize LID as part of a state or local Stormwater Management Plan for flood control. Initially, for example, developed areas upstream of vulnerable areas could be prioritized for LID.

More about the effects of stormwater volume and LID is in the blog "Three Reasons to Reduce Lawn Runoff."

Thanks to Beth Woolley of the Long Branch Historical Museum Association http://www.churchofthepresidents.org/ and Faith Teitelbaum of the Long Branch Environmental Commission http://www.visitlongbranch.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&id=71&Itemid=112 for providing so much useful information about how much Poplar Brook has changed.

RESOURCES

Army Corps of Engineers. 1974. The District: A History of the Philadelphia District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers 1866-1971. Chapter 19. Preserving a coastline. http://www.publications.usace.army.mil/Portals/76/Publications/Miscellaneous/UN-16.pdf

Bilby, J. 2008. Sea Girt NJ. A Brief History. The History Press. Charleston, SC.

Boyd, Paul. 2004. Atlantic Highlands – From Lenape Camps to Bayside Town. Arcadia Publishing. Charleston, S.C.

Colts Neck Environmental Commission. 1983. Natural Resources Inventory. Chapter 10. Hydrology And Lithology.

Cooper, M. Beavers, M. Oppenhiemer. 2005. "Future Sea Level Rise and the New Jersey Coast". http://www.princeton.edu/step/people/faculty/michael-oppenheimer/recent-publications/Future-Sea-Level-Rise-and-the-New-Jersey-Coast-Assessing-Potential-Impacts-and-Opportunities.pdf

Dahlgren, P. 1977. Geology of Monmouth County in Brief. New Jersey Geological Survey. http://www.state.nj.us/dep/njgs/enviroed/county-series/Monmouth_County.pdf

Haupt, Lewis. 1906. Changes Along the New Jersey Coast. in Geological Survey of New Jersey. 1906. Annual Report of the State Geologist of New Jersey for the Year 1905. http://books.google.com/books?id=_Q28AAAAIAAJ

Hoffman, Tom. Accessed 10/26/13. Shifting Sands of Sandy Hook. Sandy Hook, Gateway National Recreation Area, Fort Hancock, NJ. http://www.nps.gov/gate/naturescience/upload/nature_shifting_sands.pdf

James, Will. 09/18/13. The Kindest Cut of All. The Wall Street Journal. http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424127887323981304579079481094489904

Manasquan Watershed Management Group. Monmouth Coastal Watershed Partnership. 1999. Mansquan River Watershed Initial Characterization and Assessment Report.  http://www.manasquanriver.org/wmg-cdrom/reports/characterization.PDF

Moore, Kirk. 4/6/00. Report to Outline Work on Deal Lake Pipe. Asbury Park Press.

Moore, Kirk. Oct. 14, 2013 Scientists see Sandy as sign of climate change, warn that rebuilt structures should be higher. Asbury Park Press. http://www.app.com/article/20131014/NJNEWS/310140054/Rutgers-scientists-see-Sandy-harbinger-climate-change

Monmouth Beach Environmental Commission (MBEC). 1976. Environmental Inventory Report, Borough of Monmouth Beach.

New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. October 1981. New Jersey Shore Protection Master Plan Volume 1. Division of Coastal Resources. Contract Number DBC-P168. Job Number 2422-013-10. Dames & Moore, Cranford, New Jersey. http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CZIC-tc224-n5-n47-1981-v-1/html/CZIC-tc224-n5-n47-1981-v-1.htm

Richard Stockton College of NJ Coastal Research Center. Accessed 10/21/13. New Jersey Geologic History. The NJ Beach Protection Network. http://intraweb.stockton.edu/eyos/page.cfm?siteID=149&pageID=3

Roberts, R. and Youmans, R. 1993. Down the Jersey Shore. Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, NJ.  http://books.google.com/books?id=sNhX5E6YsdwC&pg=PA263&lpg=PA263&dq=Elberon+Brook/Pond+Inlet&source=bl&ots=P3P9jsWTf6&sig=00VN0lvKLBA9zhAEgAmEwwbyaPU&hl=en&sa=X&ei=kUdhUqayM9iu4APV0IDYBg&ved=0CCsQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Elberon%20Brook%2FPond%20Inlet&f=false

Rutgers Special Collections and Archives. Accessed 10/27/13. Long Branch 1868 and Surroundings - from Redbank to Deal. Prepared by J.H. Schenck for the Descriptive Guide of Long Branch and Surroundings for 1868. Rutgers Special Collections and Archives. The Changing Landscape of Monmouth County, New Jersey. http://mapmaker.rutgers.edu/MONMOUTH_COUNTY/LongBranch_1868.gif

Southern Monmouth Chamber of Commerce. Accessed 10/18/13. Ocean Grove. http://www.southernmonmouthchamber.com/oceangrove.asp

United States Geological Survey. 2003. Geology of the New York City Region. http://3dparks.wr.usgs.gov/nyc/

Wolfe, Bill. October 15th, 2013. Jim Hansen’s Talk at Princeton Provides A Sharp Contrast to Rutgers Climate Conference On Role Of Scientist. http://www.wolfenotes.com/2013/10/jim-hansens-talk-at-princeton-provide-sharp-contrast-to-rutgers-climate-science/

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