be eligible for federal funding, the towns are nominally required to
provide open beach access every quarter mile, but endless rows of
closely built houses, without the “street ends” that allow parking and
foot traffic, dictate that the actual distance between access points is
more like a mile and a half. And even where access does exist, the
scarcity of parking (in some cases by design) limits its value to out-of-
towners.
One of the groups that have suffered both because of beach replen-
ishment and lost public access is the surprisingly strong northern New
Jersey surfing community. The attraction is clear: It is state-of-the-art
surfing almost within sight of New York City. As Surfline.com points
out, “Sandy Hook boasts one of the few point breaks in New Jersey.”
Brian Unger, a graying but fit surfer turned environmentalist and
access activist, takes visiting journalists on a tour through some of the
exclusive beach towns near Sandy Hook that benefit from both beach
replenishment and storm insurance, but make it as difficult as possi-
ble for the taxpaying nonresident to enjoy the imported sand.
The tour began on a blustery day in Elberon, an exclusive section
of Long Branch just north of Bruce Springsteen’s Asbury Park. Surfers
fear that a pending beach replenishment in Elberon will smooth out
the beach, remove natural rock formations, and affect surf-friendly
wave formation by bringing deeper water closer to shore. They are
arguing for a more nuanced approach that might use offshore reefs,
different sand designs, and a much more gradually sloping underwa-
ter contour than the Army Corps of Engineers and the New Jersey
Department of Environmental Protection had planned.
Elberon was once an ocean resort town for U.S. presidents and
known as the Hamptons of the nineteenth century. James Garfield
died there in 1881, and the spot is marked with a plaque. The Church
of the Presidents, summer worship center for Presidents Ulysses S.
Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, James Garfield, Chester A. Arthur,
Benjamin Harrison, and Woodrow Wilson, is now in disrepair, but it
remains in a very upscale neighborhood.
It is unlikely the presidents were drawn by Elberon’s great surfing,
but they would have had no problem getting to the water if they wanted
to try out a board. Today, it is far more difficult. In nearby Deal, sum-
Greater New York 51