Protecting New Jersey From Sea Level Rise: The Future of the Meadowlands

“A buffer that literally means life and death”

On a driving tour to various shoreline spots, Langa, an attorney for the group, pointed back to two homes that still showed subtle water stains from the crest of Sandy's floodwaters. “This is where the marsh saved this area," she said. "The violence of Sandy’s water was absorbed by the marsh and rose slowly against the houses. If they had been hit by the same surge as the outer boroughs of New York and the Jersey Shore, they would have been gone." 

More important, according to The New York Times’s interactive mapping of the death toll, only one person died in the Hackensack River region—a 69-year-old man who reportedly stumbled and drowned after leaving his inundated car—compared to the clusters of fatalities along shorelines.

“It could have been so much worse,” said Carola, the Riverkeeper’s program director. “The wetlands are a buffer that literally means life and death.”

A new challenge dawns

It is obvious what has to be done to continue to protect this area: preserve the 7,000 acres of wetlands that remain of the 21,000 acres the region had before World War II and the 14,000 acres it had as late as the 1990s. Most people know the area for the giant Meadowlands stadium complex, which plays host to the New York Giants and New York Jets professional football teams; the adjacent wetlands are a powerhouse of different sort.

The preservation efforts of groups such as Hackensack Riverkeeper have kept the remaining marsh off-limits to development, with many benefits. Despite high levels of mercury and other heavy metals left behind by industrial activity that have some advocates wanting the area declared a Superfund site, the clean up efforts to date have allowed a rich array of wildlife to return to the watershed. One bald eagle pair recently fledged three chicks. Owls and osprey hunt, butterflies flutter, and a rare calliope hummingbird was spotted and photographed in a yard in Secaucus.

To emphasize his point, Carola drove to a boat dock where there was a flock of black skimmers, a tern-like black and white bird with a striking red and black beak. It is listed as endangered in New Jersey. "Last year we had thousands of people kayaking and riding pontoons and had 1,000 people participating in river cleanups, from pre-K to senior citizens,” Carola said. “We had garden clubs, church groups, school groups. We think people are getting the message that the flowing waters of our nation belong to everybody.”

That message is getting through just as a new challenge dawns on the region in the form of rising seas caused by climate change. The area has begun to experience more flooding at the highest tides. “I talk to senior citizens a lot and they tell me about times that streams rose slowly during rains,” Carola said. “Now, rains bring them right up to flood stage.”