By Matt Arco for NJ.com
Beaches along the Jersey Shore and lakes will be open with some restrictions this summer as the state continues to grapple with the coronavirus outbreak as Memorial Day weekend nears, Gov. Phil Murphy announced Thursday.
Beaches and lakefronts must limit the amount of people given access so people can properly socially distance. Families and households are allowed to cluster together, but otherwise people need to be six feet apart, the governor said.
The opening goes into effect on May 22.
“The Jersey Shore, after all, is where memories are made. The last thing any of us wanted was for a summertime down the shore to be a memory,” Murphy said at his daily COVID-19 briefing Thursday in Trenton.
Organized games and contact sports are still banned.
Local towns will decide how to limit access by measures like cutting back on the number of beach tags for any given day. But Murphy warned officials cannot limit beaches to people of a particular town.
“Every beach will be required to establish capacity limitations, but we will leave it to local leaders to determine the method that would be best for their community,” he said. “No community can turn a public beach into a de facto private one. All visitors must have the ability to enjoy our state’s greatest natural resource.”
Swimming will be allowed along the shore, though lifeguards will likely be spaced out rather than sitting two guards to a post, officials said. It’s more likely that there will be one lifeguard per stand so they can also spread out swimmers.
As the virus surged in the state after the first case was reported at the beginning of March, local officials closed beaches up and down the Jersey Shore and asked people not to visit those towns, even if they owned a second home there.
EnviroPolitics Blog is working to keep you informed about all aspects of the coronavirus — the status of confirmed cases, disease spread, death toll–and also how Americans are coping. Like this story, for instance. If you like what we are doing, Click to receive free EP Blog updates and please tell your friends about us.
