Jon Hurdle reports for NJ Spotlight:
Andrea Petinga never had flooding on her property in Atlantic City until Hurricane Sandy, but now it happens twice a month when there’s a full moon or a new moon, and she’s sick of it.
Petinga, who lives along the Intracoastal Waterway on the bay side of Atlantic City, took her concerns to a meeting held by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers at Ventnor on Wednesday to update the public on its massive five-year study on how to defend New Jersey’s back bays from the bigger storms and rising seas that are forecast for coming decades.
Officials said they expect to publish draft recommendations in December but those won’t be finalized until 2021 and the construction of new floodwalls, storm-surge gates or any other defenses isn’t expected until 2026 at the earliest.
That’s too late for people like Petinga, 69, who told the meeting that she doesn’t have a decade or more to wait for the authorities to figure out a way of stopping rising seas from the back bays flooding people’s properties.
“Since Hurricane Sandy, every full moon, every new moon, I have water at my house, and if you don’t move your car you will lose your car,” Petinga said in an interview after the meeting. “My sidewalk is falling in, and there’s no help. There’s no money to do anything, is what I’m told.”
Forced to relocate?
With no solution in sight, Petinga said she has considered moving away from the house where she has lived for 46 years but doesn’t want to because she likes where she lives. Still, she accepts that she might eventually be forced to relocate if the waters continue to inundate her property.
“Yes, if the water keeps coming up and nobody does anything,” she said, showing a reporter pictures of her flooded yard on her phone. “The water comes through the bulkhead during high tide whereas it never did before. It’s rotting away and nobody takes care of it.”
