Apparently now LID (Low Impact Development) techniques to stop flooding are being taught to new civil engineering students in New Jersey. Hallelujah!
It took about 20 years - but new engineering students are finally being taught the newer greener technology.
As you can see from the article, even if we have huge expanses of parking lots right now that are so big birds mistake them for lakes, we CAN retJrofit these areas to prevent flooding.
It isn't just a nice dream. Students in South Jersey are actually doing it. I would hope any NJ politician who has professed to care about flooding in the Garden State would go down there - talk to these students - and actually see the progress being made so we can replicate this all over the state - including weary, wet Wayne, NJ.
Thanks to Jeff Gardner for tweeting this story today, or I would not have heard about it....
In a move that can only be politely called indifference but is likely abject hatred, Chris Christie subjected thousands of New Jersey public workers to a commute that could be called dangerous, unnecessary and a direct distraction and disruption to emergency crews trying to protect and recover the roads and rails of Trenton from not yet crested flood waters.
Don't let the time-stamp on this put you off reading it. It was written during the hurricane. But we still have towns grappling with water. This is fascinating, and I didn't know any of it. Carolh is a stormwater engineer, and here she walks us through why we flood. Thanks Carol. - promoted by Rosi.
As Hurricane Irene, now a Category 1, bears down on us, as a stormwater drainage engineer, I need to remind folks that rainfall from ANY category hurricane can be deadly. It isn't just the water from the storm surge - it's the water from the sky.
NJ is a state of many many rivers which flood badly enough that during the Japan Tsunami coverage on CNN, the anchor broke away for stories of flooding in NJ. We don't usually get 4 inches of rain in a day, but when we do, you can bet it will do some serious damage.
Even after all these years - NJ has had folks building here for 300 years already. Why do we still have such a hard time dealing with those little drops that fall from the sky?
Having worked in the field of stormwater management for 11 years I think I can tell you why. The reasons are not only scientific, but political, and very much dependent on human behavior, ego, stubbornness and fear.
Let's start with the scientific. Rain falling on a virgin piece of forest causes actually very little runoff. The rain hits each leaf, each branch, coating it first. A little splashes into tiny drops that evaporate quickly. This is why a tree is looked at by a stormwater engineer as a giant sponge in the air. Then the water makes its way slowly down the tree. Have you ever stood beneath a tree during a storm? You usually get a good few minutes of dryness - because the tree has intercepted quite a bit.
Then that water makes its way down the trees leaves dripping ultimately to the forest floor, where a mound of rich vegetation slows it down even more. It slowly seeps downward and much more gets absorbed by the decaying underbrush, and then, because the ground is pervious through the action of worms and critters in the fertile earth, the water that is left - that hasn't coated the trees and bushes or been locked in leaf litter or the soil, starts to move. It moves downward under the topsoil through cracks in the bedrock to underground aquifers. And also - this is important - it also moves LATERALLY - sideways to the nearest waterway stream or brook, OR low spot. It is water after all. Gravity affects it, but so does pressure, and osmosis. It will move wherever it can - except up (without a pump of course).
On a virgin piece of forest, there is practically no runoff at all. But here in NJ, where we LOVE our new construction, we see it all the time. ANY time you destroy virgin forest, you WILL create runoff. The tree is no longer there to intercept the rain, so you increase the water that reaches the earth. When you clear natural forest brush and replace it with lawn - which can't hold as much water, you increase the water even more. The soil can only hold so much water and can only pass through so much at a time - it's percolation rate. The overwhelming of the ability of the water to slowly seep to rivers and streams and aquifers means it's got to go somewhere, and so it becomes runoff - the stormwater you see. The water starts out as what we call sheet flow. It is like a very thin layer on a lawn, flowing down a gentle hill. After a certain distance, that water teams up with more water from the sky, and pretty soon, you have a rivulet, eroding the soil and making a sort of channel. These gullys concentrate the water further and pretty soon, you have even more runoff, which if you have ever had problems with this - and if you live in NJ you have - you can't grow anything in your yard because the topsoil has soon washed away. If you live near a river that is also now taking runoff from a thousand little runoff sources, your life may actually be in danger from the force of floodwaters exceeding the banks.
Now, that's just cutting down forest and replacing it with lawn. When we calculate runoff, the coefficient for forest is .25 - meaning the forest intercepts about 75% of the stuff that just fell from the sky. The coefficient for lawn is .51 - meaning the lawn now only intercepts HALF what the forest did. You just increased flooding potential without even BUILDING anything yet.
Now, when you slap a patch of concrete, or asphalt, or a building down over soil that used to absorb water and held it temporarily and kept it near the surface available for plants to use and return to the sky in a process called evapotranspiration, you now eliminate the soil, and the plants' contribution to avoiding runoff. You have pretty much just created runoff from nearly ALL the rainwater hitting the earth. And if you calculate it often, like I do, you start to realize just HOW MUCH water that is.
The quick and dirty formula is just this: CIA
C is the coefficient I just gave you. I is the intensity in inches per hour. Engineers typically use 2 inches per hour to size something to hold stormwater off your roof - for example. A is simply the area in acres. That gives you the amount of rainfall in cubic feet per SECOND. Multiply that by duration of the storm, and you get the volume.
On a typical 8th of an acre - a 5000 sf lot - completely covered in asphalt - the amount of stormwater runoff is 0.2 cubic feet per second. That doesn't seem like a lot until you add up all those seconds in a one hour. It's over 720 cubic FEET for just a one hour storm. 720 cubic feet of stormwater from just one property - that has to go SOMEWHERE. Add up all the properties in even a suburban neighborhood and you can see why we are in this mess.
Well, where do we put it now? Good question. For many many years stormwater management consisted of just getting the water as quickly to the river as we could. Move it away from where it fell. That is where the phrase "God willin' and the creek don't rise" came from. When we sent our water away, we found out it actually killed folks living along the river because the river would reach dangerous flood heights we never realized it could.
Then we realized, we had to slow it down on its way to the river, so we came up with the idea of just putting it into a pond or underground temporary storage chamber to slow it down before it gets to the municipal stormwater system (detention) or sticking it the ground in what we call seepage pits (retention). One of the very first things they teach you in engineering school is how to calculate the rate of flow out of a pond. But in NJ space is at a huge premium so we prefer the underground tanks or seepage pits - big round manhole type things we stick in the ground that have holes in them to let the water slowly seep into the aquifers again. We were so darn proud of that achievement. Out of sight, out of mind. However, we now know of a phenomenon called "mounding". We are still dealing with MORE volume than before. When we put water into the ground quickly, it raises the groundwater level and homes that never used to flood ON HILLS yet in places like Wayne and Tenafly, now regularly see flooding in their basements. The water will seek its own way, and if that low spot is your basement - well, so be it. The water goes where it wants to and wherever it can. When we started to build on mountains and tore down heavily wooded areas, we practically invited the water into our basements.
In Englewood Cliffs, where the Palisades bedrock is just a few inches down, the mansion builders after cutting down many many trees, had to blast a hole in the rock to put the oversized basements with the home theaters in. To meet the building height requirements, they had to dig down. Now we have essentially homes sitting on top of bowls in the Palisades rock with sunken garages and places water just LOVES to collect. And we wonder why the basements in Englewood Cliffs flood even though they have seepage pits in the yard. It is also why they now are trying the newer techniques in Englewood Cliffs now because the old ones have so spectacularly failed.
Municipalities are still under the impression that a seepage pit will correct a lot of environmental abuse. It won't. Because it isn't just collecting in basements. It moves laterally, remember? If you send a bunch of water underground faster than the ground can recharge the aquifers or percolate down, it WILL pop up above ground further downhill. It just likes to do that. Like a mountain spring. Which is why we are now seeing flood damage on the TOP of the cliffs and sometimes devastating rivers of water cascading through some NJ gardens and backyards seeking a lower level. I saw MORE flood damage when I was a Councilwoman in Tenafly on the TOP of the cliffs, than I did near the Tenakill. By putting that water below the root zone in a seepage pit, you are also not using the process of evapotranspiration. Plants DRINK rainwater when they can reach it. By just putting it deep - you are putting it out of reach of plants that could get rid of some of that for you.
The flooding happens now because the older towns just don't have the infrastructure to deal with the increase in flow. The pockets of wooded open space hid a lot of sins for us. Instead of letting the streams breathe, we for some reason didn't like bridges and thought we could tame nature. So in our dam-building fervor, we also tried to squish any waterway through a corrugated metal pipe, and slap asphalt over it so we could save on building a bridge. By doing that, we limited the capacity that any waterway could handle.
In many parts of the country, the effort now is to remove dams and culverts and open up waterways so that they can expand when we need them to accommodate floodwater. But here in NJ, we have so many pipes and culverts designed for an earlier age of less pavement and more woods we regularly overwhelm our infrastructure. In some places we still have the stormwater sent through the same pipes as the raw sewage, which is why the sewage system gets overwhelmed during a storm. In some places where the stormwater and sewage lines are separate, the infrastructure is so old that stormwater seeps into broken sewage pipes anyway and increases the load on our treatment facilities - and also the cost.
The main problem as I see it is trying to do things the old way. Because that is how we always did it and the engineers (as Lionel would say) "God bless their hearts" who built all these things that no longer work are still around and doing things the way they were taught 60 years ago. This is where the ego and stubbornness come in.
The realization and the really hard work of trying to reverse the sins of the past only happened within the last 20 years, but many of the engineers who were trained long long before that refuse to be retrained. They are advising our Municipal elected officials and advising them poorly.
Around the same time we started to see the real impacts of overbuilding and environmental abuse, environmentalists realized that pollution wasn't just coming from a pipe out of some factory, and that stormwater erosion didn't just erode topsoil and cause the Dust Bowl of the 30's. Soil erosion carries POLLUTION along for the ride on each tiny grain. By trapping the stormwater where it was and treating it right there, we could protect our waterways from "non-point source pollution". There was now an even nobler reason to address runoff other than flood and erosion prevention - pollution prevention.
For all the vilifying of public employees and the NJDEP, I have to give them a lot of credit. They have discovered long ago that the old ways just don't work in the New Normal of climate change and overdevelopment. They have been struggling to correct the problems I have just recounted for you. However, they are getting very little help from the older engineers and elected NJ officials.
The NJDEP is on the right track in terms of the science. They are working closely with the folks breaking new ground in stormwater management. The new way forward is Low Impact Development, which is using nature - soil and vegetation to try to mimic nature's way of preventing runoff in the first place. The NJDEP and folks there like Sandy Blick have been working hard to bring this knowledge to engineers in the state. They regularly hold classes at Rutgers on this topic. But I RARELY see Municipal engineers there learning the new techniques when I attend these great classes. Which explains why when I design using these new techniques endorsed and encouraged by the NJDEP, I am forced to UNDESIGN them and go back to using the old pipe and concrete everywhere methods that the Municipal engineers feel comfortable with. They are afraid of doing something new once they know all the ways to calculate things the old way. That is where the Fear comes in. It is absurd and backwards, and all kinds of frustrating. And NJ gets wetter.
So, there you have the Science, the Stubbornness, the Ego and the Fear reasons. Here are the political ones:
Mayors. Mayors get to determine what gets built in a town. EVERY member of a planning board is appointed by the Mayor except ONE who is chosen by the Council. Mayors also appoint the engineering firms for a municipality. Too often they do it based on Pay to Play and how much that engineering firm - like Maser or T &M donated to the BCDO or some other Party Boss's coffers. THAT can not only cost you much more, but can result in more runoff. One ignorant Mayor can do a lot of damage. They can sway a Board with the threat of not reappointing a member or Planning Board engineer who disagrees with them. They can do a lot of damage by fast tracking large projects of major donors without a thought of how overdevelopment can cause flooding. That is only one way. The most common one and not malicious is just not understanding what causes flooding. For example - thinking that lawns are REQUIRED just 'cause they look nice. I recently worked on a project in the town where the Mayor demanded that the entire front of all properties in the subdivision had to be lawn. This tremendously large town is one of the towns that CNN broke their Tsunami story to talk about flooding in.
I was NOT allowed to use pervious paver sidewalk. I was not allowed to use pervious pavement for the road. They DEMANDED the impervious roadway be 50 wide right of way even though it only served 3 single family homes. They wanted impervious concrete sidewalk on BOTH sides of the road even though it would cause us to lose many more trees. They just passed law requiring impervious asphalt for driveways, and denying the use of pervious pavers for driveways. They refused the use of bio-infiltration for treating the roadway runoff, and the rain gardens I had there to treat roof runoff had to go bye bye too. As a final insult, I had to fill out the non-structural point system spreadsheet put out by the NJDEP to show I was using the techniques the town told me I was actually, ridiculously, FORBIDDEN to use.
What to do? Fortunately, there are some municipal engineering firms who understand LID techniques and what the NJDEP has been trying to accomplish. Some happen to have hydrology experts on staff who actually know what a rain garden is. Even homeowners are more knowledgeable about rain gardens, green building techniques, and rainwater recapture than most of our municipal engineers. I would recommend Municipalities DEMAND any municipal engineer have an expert who knows LID techniques and will actually encourage their use. Someone who will be REQUIRED to attend the yearly seminars by the NJDEP that teach the latest LID techniques. They should also require every Planning Board Member take a one day course in LID techniques as well. We need to look at stormwater as a regional issue and a "fluid" one. The science on this is coming fast and furious and we need to keep up. For too many years NJ licensed engineers were not required to earn continuing education credits to keep their licenses. Now they are. Let's hope that leads to me running into more municipal engineers at stormwater class. I've missed them.
I am encouraged that NJ has created a new Commission on Flooding. Mother Nature isn't the problem, we can withstand what she throws at us but only if we address the human and political issues first. I hope the new Commission seriously lends a hand to the NJDEP who has been trying to champion new stormwater techniques for years now to no avail.
There are many many ways of dealing with stormwater even in our crowded NJ towns. You would be amazed where we can put bio-infiltration strips. Existing parking lots can be retrofitted . Existing catch basins can be retrofitted. Flow though planter boxes around city buildings. Green roofs. We can fix the problem, what we need is the political will to do it. New municipal projects should be models for residents to see these things in action that can be done on individual properties. What we need is a regional approach and individual action. The whole think globally act locally mantra works on stormwater. A tiny rivulet is much easier to deal with than a raging river.
We all know what happened to the dinosaurs. They couldn't adapt to the changes in their environment, we don't want the same thing to happen to us.
Except for some severe flooding, Hoboken came out of the storm fairly unscathed.
Severe flooding caused the NJ Transit station to shut down, and made parts of the city look like Venice. But hey, no big trees fell down, and the lights stayed on, so everything must by peachy.
The shopping list is long and varied: $43 billion for transportation projects, $19 billion in water projects, $21 billion for school modernization projects, $32 billion to fund a so-called smart electricity grid, $6 billion to bring high-speed Internet access to rural America and many, many more items that some call pork, others jobs.
According to Herb Jackson, New Jersey is looking at infrastructure dollars like:
$778 million for highway and bridge construction; at least $334 million for new buses, bus stations and other capital outlays; $150 million to upgrade NJ Transit rail; $237 million for loans to upgrade sewage treatment systems; $1.1 billion nationwide for Amtrak improvements.
But for some reason there's no dollars to offset flooding in New Jersey. Over the past decade New Jersey has been hammered by flooding, with the Delaware river causing major damage twice and central Jersey seeing massive devastation in 1999's Hurricane Floyd and 2007's Nor' Easter. The picture to the left is from 1999, and a motorcycle shop that was destroyed and had to move out of town.
In 1999 I was a Councilman in North Plainfield serving as the representative to the town's Office of Emergency Management. When I responded to the call due to flooding, they sent me out in a bucket truck to pull people from cars who had wandered in to the flood water. In North Plainfield, which has only some minor streams flitting through the town, we had six feet of water in the downtown. I was standing in that water, tied to the truck, pulling people out of their vehicles and taking them to safety.
In Green Brook their borough hall was destroyed. You can see the Bound Brook pictures above. Manville, South Bound Brook, Plainfield, Rahway, New Brunswick, Piscataway, Franklin, Cranford, etc, etc, all withstood major damage that could be prevented by a solid, well planned engineering project.
For Central NJ there's already a major plan in place to ameliorate the flooding from major storms along the Green Brook and Raritan River/canal. The Green Brook Flood Control Project is a fully planned, shovel ready effort that will save millions of dollars annually in insurance costs, lost business and government expenditures. It will save even more in damages when the next major storm runs through, damages that ran in the hundreds of millions between 1999 and 2007.
The entire project from Union County through Somerset County to part of Middlesex County would cost a total of $430 million. In 10 years it would save the residents, businesses and governments of the area that much.
However, the plan is not specifically listed in the stimulus package. The representative of this area, Leonard Lance, is a freshman and may not have had the juice to get it put in. He voted against the bill, as did every other Republican in the House.
It is, however, as vital a project to the physical and economic health of central Jersey as any other, and is ready to start work within a couple months. It is a non-partisan project, with massive support from people of all political persuasions.
But for some reason the funding has only come in to the project in dribs and drabs, never as a significant portion.
It's been almost 36 years since the 1973 flood that killed more than a dozen people. If we can't fund this project now when it meets all the requirements of the major stimulus package being considered -- immediate funding to put money in the economy, quick job creation to offset layoffs in other sectors, long-term infrastructure benefit to the state and country -- then we are totally missing the boat.
The New Jersey Can Spam Act advanced in the Senate yesterday. The bill would establish criminal and civil penalties for certain spam email-related activities, including prohibiting the use of a computer in Our Fair State to send multiple commercial spam and to mislead recipients or service providers about their origin.
Open Thread: What's on your minds today, Blue Jersey?
Camden is dearly in need of revitalization and city fixture Campbell's is in a position to provide it- if their wants are met. The NY Times has the story.
Many folks who had flood insurance are still waiting for their settlements from April's storms and are voicing anger at the National Flood Insurance Program, who says they're still in their 60-day payment window.
If you were unable to work due to the flooding and storms last month and were in a county eligble for federal disaster aid, you may qualify for Federal Disaster Unemployment Assistance.
He may be in pain from the accident, but Gov. Corzine's poll numbers didn't suffer: he has a 58 percent favorable opinion rating, up from 53 percent in March, according to a Fairleigh Dickinson PublicMind poll.
Open Thread Time! What do you want to talk about today, Blue Jersey?
After the recent New Jersey floods, we noted that Congressman Ferguson had bragged on his ability to bring $5 million in federal dollars last year to the Green Brook Flood Control project. We also noted that anyone who knows about the federal project run by the Army Corps of Engineers understands that $5 million is a drop in a$430 million bucket,. At the rate Mike Ferguson is "securing funds" it will take 83 years to complete the project and protect North Plainfield, Green Brook, Bound Brook, Manville, South Bound Brook and other communities along the Green Brook from disastrous and potentially deadly funding.
Now just a couple weeks after another horrendous flood that displaced hundreds of families and cost millions of dollars in damage, Mike Ferguson is able to use his 7 years of clout in the House of Representatives to get -- $10 million. And Ferguson admits that this is as much as he can get for his district, saying that someone else will have to do the job if it's going to get done.
Rep. Mike Ferguson (R-7th Dist.) said he hopes the $10 million represents "a floor" for fiscal 2008 funding. But with action in the House of Representatives uncertain, it may be up to the U.S. Senate to add money, he said.
It'll be up to someone else. Perfect attitude for a backbencher Congressman who hasn't the juice or the ability to lobby his colleagues to get what his people need.
Even worse is the attitude of the White House, which admits that they failed to help Bound Brook and Manville, who got the brunt of the flooding in 1996, 1999 and 2007.
The Army Corps of Engineers could complete flood barriers around Bound Brook in two years if funding is "accelerated," according to Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul Woodley Jr., who oversees the agency. ...
Prodded by Congress, President Bush has proposed $10 million for flood control in the Green Brook Basin, which includes Bound Brook. But Corps and local officials said roughly $30 million is needed to complete a mile of flood barriers along the Raritan River, which again inundated the downtown during the April 15 nor'easter.
"I've submitted the president's budget and that's what I stand by," said Woodley, whose office directs the Army's civil works projects. But he acknowledged that funding level means work would not be finished for an estimated three years.
So one small portion of the project -- $30 million or 6 percent of the $430 million cost -- could be completed in two years, and the White House is not willing to provide the funding for it. And they admit that "stand by" that decision which could once again cost the federal government far more if their is yet another flood.
And Mike Ferguson can't convince them to put the whole $30 million in the budget to get the work done. He can't convince his colleagues of seven years to provide this funding.
If he can't get this kind of support while pictures are still in the paper, families are still living in shelters and businesses are months from re-opening then how can we expect Ferguson to adequately represent us in Congress?
President Bush signed a disaster declaration for Bergen, Burlington, Essex, Passaic, Somerset, and Union counties. Families and businesses in those areas affected by the flooding can now receive help from FEMA (insert joke here).
Acting Governor Codey had requested that the entire state be declared a disaster area and our federal representatives are still urging the President to expand the declaration.
Congressman Rothman, who's district includes Bergen and Passaic counties is ready to help constituents wade through the red tape:
"This declaration is good news for those most severely impacted by the flooding and I thank the President for his action. While it must be expanded to include more counties, I encourage my constituents and small businesses in our district now eligible for this federal aid to contact my office for help. Caseworkers are available to guide you through the application process for assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and identify local counseling resources. We can also help move your application along if you are eligible for aid, but find FEMA is unresponsive," said Rothman.
Constituents can call his office at (201) 646-0808 or visit the online resource center on his website for more information.
This week's flooding provides a window into the relative effectiveness of Congressman Mike Ferguson to advocate and deliver for the people of New Jersey's 7th Congressional District.
The year before Ferguson took office Hurricane Floyd hit our state, and towns like Bound Brook and Manville were devastated, with water rising to third stories of buildings and not falling for days. Other towns like North Plainfield - where I served as a Councilman at the time - had six feet of water rushing through the town. I know because I was one of the volunteers pulling people out of their cars to safety that day.
Now, in Mike Ferguson's seventh year as our DC Representative we have seen another flood provide the same kind of destruction. Added to the 1996 flooding of downtown Bound Brook that is three devastating floods in just over a decade.
I looked at the pictures of boats floating past second floor windows in downtown Bound Brook and thought it was 1999 all over again. The personal and business destruction is horrific, and the worst part is that it should be wholly unnecessary had our federal representatives come through with the funding we need to fix these flooding issues.
Since 1975 the Green Brook Flood Control Project has been studying and planning to make major engineering changes to the Raritan River and its tributaries to increase flow and retention, reducing the chance that such flooding can occur again. But all we have to date is a bridge and two levies, and the Army Corps of engineers estimates it will take $430 million in today's money to finish the deal.
You would think that after Floyd there would have been a major effort to fund this project, to get it going as fast as possible to protect the residents and business owners along this flood path. You would think that there would be some urgency to the work to protect our residents from continued natural disasters.
Mike Ferguson was first elected in 2000, along with a Republican President, a Republican Senate and a Republican House. His colleague, Rodney Frelinghuysen on the neighboring 11th district, was on the House Appropriations committee. Ferguson himself was being groomed by Tom DeLay in a leadership position as minority whip, the Texas House wheeler and dealer who could get anything done.
Add to this the fact that under Republican leadership earmarked funding for districts increased from about 1,000 a year in 1996 to 14,000 in 2005. Some of these earmarks were incredible, including $454 million for a bridge in Alaska that would have served just a few thousand people.
It's an ideal environment for a Representative to represent the needs of his district. His party in control, friendly with leadership, delegation member on the Appropriations committee money handed out hand over fist, and a real desperate need for completion of a project that would affect hundreds of thousands of people. It would take a pretty high level of incompetence to blow this one.
So what did Mike Ferguson get us for the Green Brook Flood Control Project? An average of less than $5 million a year, and some press releases and photo opportunities for the Congressman to show he cares.
At that rate, the project would take 86 years to completely fund, not including inflation and cost overruns.
NJ Transit fares will be going up on June 1. The fare hike is needed to offset a $60 million deficit. Rates are going up almost 10% and the morning "peak" period will be shortened by 30 minutes.
Codey is touring the flood damage, and plans to request federal disaster aid. The Sierra Club says that development is contributing to flooding. Meanwhile, it's not over as the flood waters move downstream. Paterson has ordered evacuations.
Quinnipiac finds Corzine's approval ratings have gone up to 51%, a change attributed to his handling of taxes. The 91mph crash occurred duing the poll period and is not thought to haver had an effect on the results.
Protesters turned out to the state Department of Environmental Protection's changes to Smart Growth corridor in Salem County along I-295. They are supported by local officials.
The Delaware-New Jersey dispute over the DRBA, which operates the Delaware Memorial Bridge, was settled. There will be no toll increase this year, but there will probably be one in 2008 to fund capital projects. They limited growth in the budget to 1.5%, which is a rare feat in New Jersey.
Some think that the Atlantic City airport will grow. (Though 2005 and 2006 saw less usage than 2003 and 2004.)
More Inconvenient Truth
How high above sea level are the nuclear power plants at Oyster Creek and Salem?
What will happen to the nuclear plants if sea level rises 20 feet as projected by various global warming scenarios?
I don't know if Solar panels will work when submerged - but they are usually mounted on the roof - and they work even when the basement is flooded. And a solar electric system is composed of a bunch of discrete components which weigh about 8 pounds - as much as a baby - and can easily be moved. According to the guys who sell them, they 'should' last 40 years - they are guaranteed for 25.
Offshore Wind Turbines are mounted on pillars that rise up 3 or 4 miles from the ocean floor to a majestic 400 feet above the surf. A 20 foot rise in sea level won't make a difference. It'll spoil the view - make them harder to see, but they'll hum along generating power with no greenhouse gases, no radioactive wastes, no mercury, no pollution.
Coal plants can be shut down and flooded like Davey Jones Locker or the mythical Atlantis. It will cost a bundle but they won't explode or melt down.
But Nuclear plants? Those bad boys are hot - radioactive. What will happen if they flood? Will they crack? Melt-Down? Will Avon By The Sea become Chernobyl by the Sea? What will happen if they crack and release all that radioactive stuff into the ocean?
Now that the 
But for some reason there's no dollars to offset flooding in New Jersey. Over the past decade New Jersey has been hammered by flooding, with the Delaware river causing major damage twice and central Jersey seeing massive devastation in 1999's Hurricane Floyd and 2007's Nor' Easter. The picture to the left is from 1999, and a motorcycle shop that was destroyed and had to move out of town.
