Jersey Shore Magazine
Issue link: http://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/191382
S I M PA C TCOASTAL on SANDY' Troubled Waters The Shore's coastal lakes have been neglected for decades. Could Superstorm Sandy breathe new life into their restoration? O s h o r e • F a l l / h o l i d a y photos courtesy of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection Wreck Pond, which borders Sea Girt and Spring Lake, before and after Superstorm Sandy. 2 0 1 3 continued on page 34 j e r s e y n bleak and bare winters' days, yearning for some signs of life, my mom and I would go "ponding"—searching for waterfowl on the coastal lakes of Ocean and Monmouth Counties. Outfitted with binoculars and a thermos of cocoa, we'd start our hunt at Twilight Lake in Bay Head and travel north, looping through to Spring Lake and Lake Como. Some days we'd get lucky and see some ruddy ducks among the reeds, or a bufflehead pair diving down and popping up again like corks. All this changed after Sandy. The Superstorm hit these lakes with a one-two punch of storm surge and debris, negatively impacting the water quality of already taxed systems. In Deal Lake, the white underbellies of scores of dead fish contrasted with the black water, victims of the surge's salinity. Downed trees and construction debris littered these lakes like matchsticks. Herring gulls took up residence atop the remains of someone's former home in Twilight Lake. Not that these lakes were visions of pristine beauty before Sandy. "These lakes had become shallow, foul retention basins," stated John Weber, Chairman, Bradley Beach Environmental Committee. In recent years, finding waterfowl became more hit-and-miss as the scourge of the shore—the Canada Goose—took up permanent residence in many of the coastal ponds. Instead of a tranquil reflection of the blue sky, the surfaces of the ponds were choking on what appeared to be green Jell-O, courtesy of the algae blooms. Long neglected, the approximately fifteen coastal lakes in Monmouth and Ocean Counties had become filled with sediment and storm water runoff. "Once the 'crown LAKES 33