Tag: environment

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Save Asbury’s Waterfront Community Voices – Joyce Grant

Development of the North Beach of Asbury Park is a serious environmental issue as well as a social justice issue. This is the last natural oceanfront resource area in New Jersey, and Joyce Grant, environmental activist, shares her thoughts on the damage that development would cause.

#boardwalkandbeachesforall

PLEASE ATTEND THE CITY COUNCIL MEETING FEB 13th. AP High School Auditorium.  Learn about development of the North Beach and share your thoughts in the public comment period.

NOW IS THE TIME

“We cannot allow our waterfront developers to make anything, even in appearance, on our public land beaches, and boardwalk with its shops and restaurants not inclusive for all members of our and other communities who enjoy our public beaches and boardwalk.” – Joyce Grant

NOW IS THE TIME to preserve the north end oceanfront in Asbury Park with a living shoreline coastal park complete with habitats, nesting areas for our diminishing wildlife and native plant species. Build dune structures to help mitigate flooding, beach erosion. Protect our public people friendly sustainable wide benched boardwalk. Create a public pervious pavement parking lot in order to allow storm water to infiltrate into the soil recharging ground water, support ocean friendly gardens that naturally filter polluted runoff from entering into Deal Lake and our Ocean.

Now is the time to accept the reality that our capitalistic system has failed. It promotes class and extreme economic divisions between capitalists and the working class. Capitalism does not cultivate the needed more equal distribution of wealth in our country, our world.

Now is the time to fight discrimination, homelessness, displacement, and injustice towards peoples of different color, different cultures, religions, and nationalities.

Now is the time for Asbury Park’s Master Waterfront Developers and City to come together to stop the interference and pollution of our precious natural life-giving resources that we need to survive. The air we breathe. The water we drink. The land we live, play and grow food on. Protect our lakes and ocean coastlines with ocean friendly gardens which naturally filter polluted runoff from entering into our lakes and ocean. Provide and keep affordable housing throughout the city for all our residents who need it. Asbury Park’s residents deserve to live in a clean healthy affordable non discriminating environment.

Now is the time to institute an Environmental Impact Assessment(EIA) requirement for all new residential and infrastructural development and all future planning laws. The EIA is a process by which anticipated effects on the environment of a proposed development or project are measured. If the likely effects are unacceptable, design measures or other relevant mitigation measures can be taken to reduce or alleviate these effects.

Now is the time to call on our local coastal environment experts such as American Littoral Society, Clean Ocean Action, and the Jersey Shore Surfrider Foundation to help save, bring back living shorelines in Asbury Park through a public, meeting-type forum.

Now is the time to create a better and just world not only for all that inhabit our planet but the planet itself which begs to be nurtured, protected sustained, balanced, healed and loved for all it has given in order for us to survive. There is only one earth for all of us to share, to make fruitful again, with clear, clean waters and air for all who come after us.

Joyce Grant, Environmental and Social Justice Activist

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YOUR THOUGHTS: Asbury Park Waterfront Development Survey

 iStar, the Asbury Park waterfront developer plans to build a membership-only, walled,  waterfront beach club on the 6th-7th Avenue lots of the waterfront/boardwalk. The city asks for your thoughts on the project.

A walled beach club, street side of the boardwalk at North Beach. (Artist’s rendering from iStar; TRC meeting, 12/14/18 )

iStar North End Boardwalk/Waterfront  Project – City Asks For Public Comments

Asbury Park Complete Streets Coalition, supporting Save Asbury’s Waterfront (SAW) suggests these 5 points to consider in responding to the survey:

1)   Oceanfront Preservation:  We want to establish an oceanfront park from 6th Avenue north to the Loch Arbor border.  We want no new development east of Ocean Avenue (with the exception of standard park amenities like bathrooms).

2)   Boardwalk:  We want the boardwalk restored, with a forward-looking vision.  We want the boardwalk restored at least to its old height/width, possibly expanded and/or elevated, up to Deal Lake Drive and the meandering boardwalk to go from Deal Lake Drive to Loch Arbor border. We would like to see the boardwalk moved westward beginning at the sewer plant.  We want a protection system comprised of dunes and bulkhead.

3)   Fisherman’s Lot:  We want a solution that: is environmentally sound (respects wildlife habitat, forward-looking stormwater management plan); that is protective (incorporates a dune system); and is accessible by the public.

4)   Social Inclusion and Public Access:  We want increased, year-round public transportation options that bridge the east side and west side, such as the jitney service and increased, safer bike lanes/paths

5)   Transparency:  We want the reestablishment of the Waterfront Redevelopment Advisory Board.  We seek a well-rounded and independent board of overseers comprised respected professionals and community leaders who will trust and challenge one another, and engage directly with the waterfront developers and City management/governance on critical issues facing Asbury’s Waterfront.

Please note public comment period ends 12/23/18.

If you know anyone who is interested in providing public comment on the North End Boardwalk Project but does not have access to a computer or mobile device, please print out this form which can be dropped off at the City Manager’s Office on the 2nd floor of City Hall.

Take the /survey