Most of the shore welcomes such interventions to protect tourism, which generates more than $5 billion annually in state and local tax revenue. Bay Head, though, tends to get touchy when government rolls into town with big ideas.
After Sandy, homeowners in Bay Head and neighboring Mantoloking mounted an unsuccessful five-year legal challenge to prevent the construction of dunes on oceanfront property protected by their privately owned seawall. The plaintiffs’ legal cost exceeded $1 million, according to Bathgate, who helped pay the bill.
Beachfront homeowners were stung earlier when the state Supreme Court, in a landmark 1984 decision, ruled that the quasi-public Bay Head beach association had no right to reserve the oceanfront for residents’ exclusive use. The association today maintains some of the strictest rules along the Jersey shore, prohibiting food and beverages on the beach except for water in clear containers.
Visitors By Train
Summertime passengers push Bay Head’s daily boardings to about 286, double the off-season figure. The new elevated substation, with a completion date in late 2023, will provide steady electricity to the rail yard, ultimately benefiting all the line’s riders, NJ Transit says.
Mayor Bill Curtis, in an interview, said the town had spent around $200,000 challenging the plan. Bay Head got design concessions, but its greater concern is the pumping of millions of gallons of water into Twilight Lake and the Barnegat Bay -- keeping the construction area dry but potentially disturbing fuel and other contaminants spilled decades ago.
“It’s just unnecessary,” said Curtis, 78, a Republican and mayor for 14 years. “They’re not willing to do anything to assist the residents of Bay Head.”
Save Barnegat Bay, a non-profit group working to reverse decades of environmental damage, in a lawsuit claims that the project lacks wetlands permits and has disturbed nesting ospreys and other wildlife. Twilight Lake and the bay “are entitled to the highest protections of the Clean Water Act and New Jersey laws,” according to the lawsuit, filed on June 24.
“Maybe someone can explain why they have to idle trains 24-7, spewing exhaust into the atmosphere,” Luca Zanin, 50, of Santa Rose, California, a winery owner and summertime Bay Head resident, said in an interview.
Smith, the NJ Transit spokesman, said the agency doesn’t comment on pending litigation.
In Ocean County Superior Court on July 20, Save Barnegat Bay failed to win a temporary stop-work order. The matter next comes up in August.
“The picture is far bigger than Bay Head,” Michele R. Donato, an attorney for the group, said in an interview. “We’re at a pivotal point of where we stand with climate change and the impacts we are now seeing.”
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.