A project to end increasing rounds of flood damage is pitting New Jersey Transit against an oceanside enclave of multimillion-dollar homes.
Bay Head, where billionaire philanthropist Peter Kellogg learned to sail as a kid, is the last stop on the North Jersey Coast Line that runs about 70 miles north to Manhattan. It’s also the site where NJ Transit, the nation’s largest statewide commuter-transportation provider, is spending $32 million to rebuild a power station damaged by Hurricane Sandy in 2012.
But town officials and some residents want no part of an effort to boost trains used more by summer visitors than themselves. Opponents cite the construction’s potential to contaminate Twilight Lake, which feeds Barnegat Bay, the state’s largest inland waterway. And while Governor Phil Murphy -- a regular at the upscale Charlie’s of Bay Head restaurant on the lake’s edge -- calls for 50% clean energy statewide by 2030, the project will leave the town’s trains still relying on diesel fuel.
“You have a governor who’s opposed to fossil fuels and meanwhile, they have a train that’s polluting the environment,” said beachfront homeowner Lawrence E. Bathgate II, 82, an attorney and former finance chairman of the Republican National Committee. “It’s as if we’re second-class citizens.”
In many oceanfront U.S. towns, wealthy homeowners are under increasing pressure to limit coastal damage. This year alone in California -- where the U.S. Geological Survey model predicts sea-level rise of as much as 6.6 feet (2 meters) by 2100 -- the owners of an $11 million Laguna Beach house were ordered to dismantle a seawall that opponents said was eroding the beach. Along Highway 1 in Stinson Beach, residents for years have been fighting a proposal to block home-improvement permits.
In New Jersey, Murphy, a 63-year-old Democrat running for re-election in November, on July 19 referred questions about Bay Head to his staff. Jim Smith, an NJ Transit spokesman, said that adding electrical lines and doing away with diesel locomotives would be cost-prohibitive and introduce safety and reliability risks.
“This project is integral to the day-to-day operations of the North Jersey Coast line,” with 22,800 average daily riders pre-pandemic, Smith said in an email.
At its July 21 meeting, NJ Transit’s board approved an updated capital-plan proposal to test battery-powered locomotives along the line. The railroad, though, lacks the necessary $46 million in funding.
“It makes a lot of sense to get rid of diesel,” regular rider Eileen Murphy, of Brick, said on July 22 as she awaited a northbound train at the Bay Head station.
‘Country Village’
Bay Head’s business association describes the town as “a quaint country village by the sea.” The town has a population of less than 1,000, a median household income of $103,571 and a median housing value of $1.2 million.
While neighboring Point Pleasant Beach courts vacationers with motels and boardwalk thrill rides, Bay Head’s version of a crowd is the queue for Mueller’s bakery crumb cake. Seaside Heights, several towns to the south, had six seasons of nightclub escapades by Snooki and her MTV’s “Jersey Shore” co-stars. The Bay Head Yacht Club, where tennis whites may not be worn in the dining room, hosts regattas for single-masted catboats.
Whatever Bay Head lacks in typical New Jersey shore culture, though, it shares the constant threat of climate change with its neighbors on a fragile 20-mile-long (32-kilometer) barrier island. Flooding from Sandy, in 2012, turned a half-dozen municipalities into a disaster area that was rebuilt with hundreds of millions of dollars in federal aid. Since then, increasingly frequent nor’easters and other storms have caused flooding and beach erosion, prompting sand replenishment and other steps by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.