We Humans Are Being Pushed out of Cape May Co.

The year-round population of Cape May County has been declining for two decades, and unless we change our political makeup significantly, the forces undoing us will prevail. For years, people flocked to our shores and even began settling here in growing numbers. The newcomers made a living in a number of ways but catering to the tourists in one way or the other dominated.
In only 40 years, our population grew over 100 percent, from 48,555 in 1960, to 82,266 in 1980, to 102,326 in 2000. What was the driver? If you couple the natural beauty of our county, complete with our wildlife and beaches with large nearby cities connected in the mid-1950s by way of the new Garden State Parkway, you have the growth Cape May County experienced in the second half of the last century.
Once this beauty, this magnetism, this magic was opened up to millions of people nearby, one would assume that it would only continue to attract more lovers of its splendor who desired to settle here. In fact, that opposite is now happening. County population peaked at 102,326 and has since fallen to 94,430 in 2016.
In order to better understand the challenges to human life in Cape May County, the Cape Issues citizens’ group invited County Engineer Dale Foster to our July 11 meeting. He brought with him Tim Chelius, former head the South Jersey Transportation Planning Organization.
They explained that there is a powerful environmental lobby which stands in the way of any effort to improve the infrastructure of our county. Their desires are becoming clear and understandable: Human life on our peninsula presents a challenge to the non-human species which also live or pass through this peninsula; the fewer people here, the less the challenge.
Currently, as a result of their efforts, the citizens of Cape May County are finding themselves being squeezed out. The harder it is for visitors to travel here, the fewer it is who come, and thus the less money in circulation to feed the year-around residents. So, their businesses wither, and they move away.
Are residents to accept this fate?  If we believe that we cannot live in harmony with nature, then the unselfish thing to do would be to move somewhere else. If, however, we believe we can strike a viable balance between human and non-human needs, we should work to that end.
At this time, the political forces at the county level clearly are behind the people. They are advancing the efforts to improve the infrastructure and the freeholders are dedicating $125 million toward the billion-dollar-plus efforts needed.
In the face of our ongoing population decline and well-documented road-system failures, by their inaction, it has become clear that our state and federal elected representatives have aligned themselves with the environmental lobby.  Tom Henry, a fellow member of Cape Issues, pointed out at the meeting, that after Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, which shares our same fragile environment, the federal government handed out billions of dollars toward reparations and infrastructure improvements, yet Cape May County’s needs went largely unmet, after similar destruction by Hurricane Sandy. This in the face of our being one of the top ten most vulnerable places to evacuate in the nation.
Cape May County stands at one of the world pinnacles of the struggle between human rights and animal rights. As a Christian, I know that the human race has responsibilities, as expressed in the Bible in Genesis:
God spoke: Let us make human beings in our image, make them reflecting our nature so they can be responsible for the fish in the sea, birds in the air, the cattle, and, yes, Earth itself, and every animal that moves on the face of Earth. God created human beings; he created them godlike, reflecting God’s nature.  He created them male and female. God blessed them: Prosper! Reproduce! Fill Earth! Take charge! Be responsible for fish in the sea and birds in the air, for every living thing that moves on the face of Earth.
I believe that it is our privilege to live on this incomparable peninsula but to do so responsibly.
Art Hall