Free Essay. New Jersey Coastal Community Case Study

Immediately after the great Superstorm Sandy, the majority of the coastal communities in New Jersey in the United States of America began struggling with their quick recovery attempts as well as not being able to regard various systematic changes essential towards promoting their long-term resilience process (Wilson, 2013). To help them with their more extended period resilience attempts, several organizations such as the New Jersey Department of the Environmental Protection (NJDEP), as well as the Coastal Management Program (CMP) introduced and developed the Resilient Coastal Communities Initiative (RCCI) through the financial support of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) via a distinctive and very competitive award known as Crest Award. Additionally, through the financial support of RCCI, the CMP program partnered with other organizations to provide the New Jersey coastal community with planning aid as well as technical assistance to promote resilience as well as lower their exposure to coastal hazards.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Order now

In this case, the borough of Avalon consists of a given part of the slender barrier island at the far end of the coastal region of New Jersey. This particular portion experiences significant weather events like nor'easters as well as hurricanes. These significant events of weather severely affect the property of borough as well as booming summer tourism sector in the coastal part of New Jersey and the whole region of America. After the event of nor'easters in the early 1960s, the New Jersey's Avalon constructed several shoreline barriers. Besides, the borough also formed several policies that helped in setting up a clear path for the future action plan in the Avalon, New Jersey coastal community. These particular laws and policies enabled the borough to purchase the already damaged properties of shoreline as well as changing them into the borough properties.

They also bought an additional unused piece of land, as well as limited shoreline growth and development. Therefore, with these given laws and regulations put in place, the Avalon community in New Jersey developed extensive dunes to prevent borough from the excellent results of the coastal storms affecting New Jersey (Wilson, 2013). In the mid-1980s, the borough decided to renew its efforts to construct various natural barriers, substantial physical obstacles as well as emergency response programs. For a very long period, these given shoreline preventive measures have required extensive maintenance. Over time, the borough has much depended on the local, state of New Jersey, as well as the support from the federal government of America to grow and develop as well as maintenance of the protective structures. Generally, the work of Avalon has not broadly recognized the climate changes, yet this particular coastal community has been able to recover faster from the recent sandy storms, like hurricanes. Similarly, the borough also is considering including sea-level increase projections in its design of the new breakwaters.

Recently, Avalon has received several appreciations for its explicit work, as well as frequently shares information regarding its attempts with the coastal community in New Jersey and also in the USA as a whole. Again, Avalon continues planning as well as preparing for the healthy and destructive coastal storms around New Jersey. Lastly, future work of the Avalon consists of the possible construction of several T-shaped breakwaters directly perpendicular to the shoreline. Borough targets that these given structures will assist in protecting the beaches around and lower the frequency of the nourishment processes of the beach.

Criticism of the New Jersey Community to the Resilience

Overall, a good number of people in New Jersey reside in most areas vulnerable to coastal hazards such as massive tides and hurricanes. According to recent research, it is approximated that about New Jersey's 140 miles of the Atlantic coast as well as about 1600 miles of the tidal shoreline are at a high risk from the coastal storms as well as the storm surge; while about 84 percent at high risk of the coastal gulley erosion, while about 95 percent are at a high risk of the rise of sea level (Walker et al. 2012). Generally, over 600 000 acres of New Jersey's garden state is portrayed as highly exposed to the effects of the coastal as well as revering flooding, the shoreline, rise in sea level as well as storm surge.

Besides, the flooding location and its extent in New Jersey are dependent on the different forms of the storm. For instance, in 2011, the Hurricane commonly known as Irene came along with it a typical storm called storm surge of about three to feet, leading to the moderate towards severe flooding along the ocean as well as moderate tidal flooding along the Delaware Bay as well as river (Wilson, 2013). Nevertheless, Irene's record high rainfall severely led to damaging revering flooding in highly populated along with busy areas such as Raritan, Rockaway, the Millstone as well as Passaic Rivers, causing about seven casualties and property damages worth about one billion dollars. A year later, another form of storm commonly called Superstorm sandy caused less rainfall to the shore of New Jersey, but led to the record of high tides as well as wave actions in combination with the sustained high winds about 50 to 60 mph with the presence of gusts as high as about 70 to 90 mph, battered New Jersey state.

In general, Avalon has put into practice various shoreline preventive measures since in the 1960s, consisting of the development of the preventive infrastructure, the build-up of the natural barriers, as well as the construction of the most appropriate mitigation process of various hazards and effective communication plan in the coastal community of New Jersey. Besides, the borough has tried to maintain these given shoreline preventive measures over a very long time. The maintenance of Avalon's working efforts is possible via the able and robust management that operates effectively with the members of the community as well as elected officials to help in fostering the ongoing support as well as financial aid. However, Avalon has been under heavy criticism for not having the official shoreline protection measures. Instead, its primary measure has come about via the convergence of other effective planning strategies. For example, the coastal community of New Jersey has completed several shoreline protection measures to gain significant points on the National Flood Insurance Programs' (NFIP) Community Rating Systems (CRS) for its residents, with which it became a member in 1996. These particular efforts made by the CRS are generally controlled by Avalon's Floods Management Program in New Jersey State, which it administers on an annual basis.

The Dune Management Plan of the borough, completed in 2009, acts as the guide for the dune monitoring as well as maintenance strategies. Additionally, Avalon completed and made ready its first mitigation plan of various coastal hazards in the year 1983, which is called the Storm Mitigation Planning report. Hence since then, multiple methods resembling the initial release have been made by Avalon. The last plan of this report got completed in the year 2010, as well as by 2015, and the borough has worked tirelessly on another update. Similarly, these particular plans, through the leadership management of Avalon pushing for immediate action, has assisted Avalon in piecing together an entire shoreline preventive measures. Thus, this given case study outlines Avalon's attempts towards the development and maintenance of whole shoreline preventive measures for the New Jersey coastal community.

National Policies and Administrative Changes to Promote Community Resilience

Recently, the concept of resilience has become a significant topic of discussion of federal disaster policies. According to Judith Rodin; the president of Rockefeller Foundation, the term resilience is referred to as the capacity of any organization, a person, community or natural system to prepare for the effective disruption, to get recovery from shocks as well as stresses, and to adapt as well as develop from the disruptive experience. In other words, the term resilience is a relevant to abroad range of sudden disruptions, which consists of the terrorist attacks, disease outbreaks, financial problems, as well as of chronic stresses like endemic poverty as well as a high rate of unemployment. This particular concept has been regularly used in disasters, particularly, to respond to the various highly destructive as well as costly recent situations and the developing consensus that high and extreme conditions of weather may become harsher as well as regular shortly.

Usually, achieving a high level of resilience requires collective efforts of all the stakeholders, including the government, citizens, the private sectors as well as organizations. Generally, it is everyone's business to enhance resilience within society. The disaster resilience has become a great matter of the federal laws and policies since several communities in New Jersey require the federal government to help in responding as well as recovery efforts when one of the significant hazards as well as catastrophe strikes. In between 2011 and 2014, there were about 290 presidential major hazard declarations, as well as about 60 emergency declarations through various instances in which a given state or maybe the tribal government needed federal assistance programs, as well as confirmation of an emergency, provides for more limited interventions to achieve the specific immediate requirement or maybe to help in preventing a hazard from happening, with each form of declarations assisting the community in proportion their wants. Usually, these particular federal programs progressively are not only designed to bring back the cities to their original conditions but also to help in rebuilding them better as well as more reliable than ever before to understand effectively and withstand future hazard occurrences.

This particular paper majorly focuses on how the federal government has dramatically included the resilience concept into the disaster laws and policies as well as how it is also nurturing the resilience at different levels that is local, regional, or maybe a personal level. On a personal level, federal policies enhance awareness of the potential risks as well as encourage mitigation strategies like raising a residence situated within the floodplain. While at both communities as well as regional levels, these federal laws and policies help in providing adequate funding for the effective planning, mitigation process, as well as reconstruction of the housing as well as infrastructure, initially via the Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) programs. Usually, as the various communities recover from hazardous events, they have a given opportunity to rebuild in different ways that make them more productive and resilient than ever before. Even though the sensitive sense of vulnerability, as well as entry of funds as well as the desire to acquire a large-scale reconstruction that proceeds the hazard, can offer various communities a distinctive opening for that particular rebuilding, the villages which have not experienced any hazardous events also have got the opportunity to include the resilience into daily spending as well as land-application decisions.