Flood Mitigation Mayors Group In Ocean County Earns State Honor

POINT PLEASANT, NJ — A group of Ocean County mayors who have worked together to address flooding involving the northern barrier island in the county have been honored by a statewide planning organization.

The Barrier Island Flood Consortium is made up of 10 towns in northern Ocean County: Point Pleasant, Point Pleasant Beach, Bay Head, Mantoloking, Brick Township, Toms River, Lavallette, Seaside Heights, Seaside Park and Berkeley Township. It formed in 2024 to come up with regional solutions to the flooding issues that affect all of the towns. The group was honored by the New Jersey Planning Officials organization with the 2025 New Jersey Planning Officials Achievements in Planning Award, officials said.

"While devastating weather events like Superstorm Sandy are rare, our area is plagued by back bay flooding caused by tidal cycles and wind patterns," said Point Pleasant Mayor Robert Sabosik, who along with Bay Head Mayor William Curtis suggested the creation of the consortium.

"Torrential rainfall, high tides and winds often disrupt daily life and the problem keeps growing more frequently and severe as time goes on and storms intensify," Sabosik said.

"Each of these towns has historically always flooded, but not as often as we experience today," said Frank Pannucci, the borough administrator for Point Pleasant who serves the same role for Bay Head under a shared services agreement. "Each storm is more impactful than in years past and nuisance flooding is a regular event now."

Pannucci said the mayors, who had been gathering for years at the Barrier Island Mayors Association meetings, realized a regional approach could help all of the towns and agreed to participate.

Point Pleasant Borough is the lead agency, Pannucci said, "because in any consortium or shared service, there needs to be a main town as the point of contact by law. Each participating town put in starting funds that have gone towards an attorney and engineer to start putting the wheels in motion and to go after grant money for research and subsequent construction."

Curtis said the towns in the consortium face the same issues.

"We have the Atlantic Ocean, Barnegat Bay and other bodies of water and we live on the barrier island. While we are not oblivious to the whims of Mother Nature, we know that by working together, we can come up with worthwhile and effective ways to at least mitigate flooding in our towns," he said.

Bay Head officials have been studying it and going after grants for flood mitigation efforts, but the joint efforts of the consortium will eliminate redundancies and "lead to implementing coordinated remedies," Curtis said.

Sabosik said the group has hired Colliers Engineering and attorney Jean Cipriani for the effort. Efforts have begun on compiling all the flood data and projects the towns have done separately, and the group is applying for about $400,000 in grant funding to pay for planning and research.

"And then we’ll keep applying for (grants for) actual construction," Sabosik said.

The group is looking at funding on a regional basis "that could potentially pay for large scale environmentally conscious solutions to stem the flooding at its source," said Seaside Park Mayor John Peterson. "The problem is when the wind blows the bay and ocean water and the tides are high, the best drainage systems in the world can’t do much if they are already underwater."

The regional approach aligns with how state and federal agencies are looking for cooperative efforts, he said, and that is what prompted the award from the New Jersey Planning Officials organization.

"To my knowledge, there isn’t a group like this in the entire state working collaboratively to solve a regional problem. It’s a unique approach and all the mayors are committed to it," he said.

"To be recognized by the New Jersey Planning Officials, especially at such an early stage of the group, is validation that we are moving in the right direction," Mantoloking Mayor Lance White said. The organization is made up of professional city planners and residents appointed by mayors and municipal governing bodies to serve on planning boards and zoning boards of adjustments and was founded in 1938. It is the largest NJ League of Municipalities affiliate when it comes to municipal planning and the official association of all land use boards in New Jersey.

"These are people who live and breathe municipal planning," White said.

Some of the ideas proposed so far include a series of storm pumps that will pump water back out into the bay, higher bulkhead requirements, flood gates and possible dredging of the bay itself, officials said.

Sabosik said Point Pleasant has been working with the Barnegat Bay Partnership "trying to revitalize our living shoreline along our marshes and upgrading drainage systems."

"While technically not on the barrier island, what happens there affects Point Boro because of the waterways that border us," he said. "That water raises our already high water tables, specifically from Barnegat Bay. Some of what we’ve learned and done will no doubt help spark the creativity of our professionals when combining our work with what other towns have done. I’m looking forward to what our engineers come up with."

Seaside Heights Mayor Tony Vaz said the focus is on realistic solutions.

"We don’t want ideas that have no chance of coming to fruition. We want real projects with real results," Vaz said. "None of us want to do endless studies with nothing concrete to show for it. All our towns are committed to this bipartisan think tank and together we are going to do great things for the northern barrier island."

"It’s going to take all of us and our combined efforts to come up with some out-of-the-box thinking," Point Pleasant Beach Mayor Doug Vitale said. "All our residents work, play, shop and drive through all our municipalities daily so it’s great to have all the mayors and towns working together. This consortium will no doubt enhance our ability to secure resources and deliver projects that will protect and strengthen the northern barrier island."

For Brick Township, which has the most extensive amount of waterfront of all the participating towns, Mayor Lisa Crate said the consortium's united efforts "can better address the serious flooding challenges facing the barrier island and the entire bay area. Collaboration is the strongest path forward, and united action gives all our communities the best chance to make real, positive progress for everyone involved."

"Receiving an award for the work that we’ve accomplished so far is an honor, but it’s just the beginning of the work we need to continue to do in order to serve all our residents now and well into the future," Crate said.

"Working together is the only workable solution to address regional flooding problems on both the barrier island side of the Barnegat Bay and our mainland towns," said Mayor John Bacchione of Berkeley Township, at the southern end of the northern barrier island. "Local watersheds and tidal waters know no municipal boundaries. We are hopeful these current efforts of working together will protect our communities in the future."

"Flooding is something that is going to happen no matter what due to our geographic area," Sabosik said. "It cannot realistically be stopped, but by working collaboratively all our towns combined can come up with some regional approaches for effective flood mitigation efforts to help control it and better our quality of life."