A report by a nonprofit environmental organization that rates the health of the nation’s beaches gives New Jersey’s a failing grade.
The Surfrider Foundation, in its recently released 2023 Beach Report on 31 coastal states, gives the state’s beaches an F, one of four states to get the organization’s lowest grade.
Each year the foundation publishes a report on the health of the beaches in the 31 coastal and Great Lakes states and issues grades on an A through F scale. The foundation, headquartered in San Clemente, California, was founded in 1984 and has since grown to become one of the nation’s largest activist networks focused on oceans and beaches. It has 90 chapters nationwide and an estimated 50,000 members.
The report faults New Jersey for “backing away from commitments” to plan for climate change and require land use plans that account for sea level rise. While many in the Garden State’s coastal zone feel the state has overreached in its moves to regulate land use with a constant eye to climate change, Surfrider argues the state has not gone far enough.
The report grades the state harshly on four criteria: sediment management, coastal “armoring,” coastal development and sea level rise. It faults New Jersey for relying heavily on beach replenishments without having adequate regional sediment management plans.
The report also says that the state does not do enough to incentivize nature-based solutions to shoreline protection and instead relies heavily on “armoring practices.”
On coastal development, the beach report criticizes the state for allowing “a significant amount of new development” in coastal zones.
Surfrider notes the state’s new efforts at sea level rise disclosure regulations for the sale of homes, but it calls disclosure “moot” if the state continues to allow new development in areas prone to sea level rise.
The organization’s report was issued just prior to the publication of New Jersey’s proposed regulations under its Resilient Environments and Landscapes program. The REAL regulations appear to speak directly to many of the criticisms in the Beach Report.
The other states receiving F grades were Indiana, Ohio and Alabama. Four A grades were given, to Maryland, Maine, California and Washington.
Most of the 31 states rated in the report did not fare well. For the Surfrider Foundation, “without a quantum leap in action, our coastlines will increasingly suffer major climate change impacts.”
The full report can be found at surfrider.org.
Contact the reporter, Vince Conti, at vconti@cmcherald.com.
