LONG BRANCH – Looking back at the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy is prompting one of New Jersey's largest coalitions of environmental volunteers to look forward to a more challenging battle: climate change.

Clean Ocean Action celebrated the final month of it’s “Waves of Action” campaign, a year-long effort in response to Hurricane Sandy, at the beach inside McLoone’s Pier House Saturday morning, and hinted at a renewed effort to encourage social and political action against global warming.

“Waves of Action ‘For the Shore’ was Clean Ocean Action coalition’s response to Superstorm Sandy,” Executive Director Cindy Zipf said. “It has been a remarkable year of challenges and achievements, and there are thousands of stories of tenacity, compassion, resiliency and hope.”

Mary-Beth Thompson, Clean Ocean Action director of operations, said “Waves of Action” was born in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.

“When the storm hit, we were displaced from our Sandy Hook headquarters,” Thompson said. “We started meeting in Atlantic Highlands, there was no furniture, we were sitting on the floor. Everyone went to work volunteering, and we decided to take that and put it on steroids and turn it into a year-long program.”

Over the past 12 months, the campaign has mobilized 13,725 volunteers and 125 organizations, completing and contributing to 281 projects in over 70 towns in New York and New Jersey.

Those efforts started by addressing the immediate need after the storm, providing relief from the lack of power, food and clean water in shore communities, and cleaning up homes damaged and destroyed by floodwaters and winds.

Britta Wetzel, executive director of environmental non-profit Save Barnegat Bay, said Clean Ocean Action was key to her region’s recovery in the first weeks after Sandy.

“I was displaced for seven months, I lived on a mattress on the floor,” Wetzel said. “I didn’t have the ability to organize cleanups, but Clean Ocean Action could organize massive cleanups. At one we had over 500 volunteers.”

Clean Ocean Action volunteers said the government did not do enough in the aftermath of the storm to help victims, and has not sustained its efforts.

“The enormous job of cleaning up the mess was just step one,” Sea Bright volunteer coordinator Frank Lawrence said. “The federal, state and insurance programs are not making people whole. We are not doing enough on a governmental basis.”

Wetzel said the effort to address human need is not over.

“The push now should be getting folks heat in their homes,” Wetzel said. “You don’t realize that there are people living in sticks, some of them have electrical problems, many of them have no heating in their homes. It seems this year we are having the same conversations as last year.”

In the spring and summer, the campaign moved to more familiar areas of concentration for Clean Ocean Action – keeping coastal waters clean. In March, volunteers helped remove garbage and debris from parks.

The organization's volunteers led it's biannual "Beach Sweeps" garbage removal efforts, then helped shore towns and businesses prepare for their summer tourist season.

“We themed our monthly programs according to process,” Thompson said. “In the summer, we focused on more sustainable rebuilding and resiliency, we did projects like installing rain barrels and how to make a rain garden.”

Over the summer “Waves of Action” moved to more educational activities, mainly focused around energy and water conservation, Thompson said.

“We’ve really started to pick up on our educational programming,” Thompson said. “We used our November theme to focus on educating advocated. We had an online teach-in for teachers K-12 to access and use in their lesson plans.”

The online teach-in will continue and expand, Thompson said, to encompass higher education.

While Clean Ocean Action leaders and their allies haven’t decided whether “Waves of Action” will continue in 2014, they do have their eyes firmly on the future, a future that puts New Jersey’s coastline and its shore communities firmly in harm’s way.

“It’s going to be key for New Jersey to learn from this experience,” Thompson said. “We will be more involved in climate change. We have to focus on rebuilding sustainably and smarter. It is impossible to be stronger than the storm, but we can be smarter.”

A scientific survey found that there is widespread belief that much of climate change is manmade, and that there is public will to do something about it.

The survey found that 89 percent of respondents thought that climate change was totally or mostly manmade, and only one percent thought climate change was not occurring.

Respondents favored building bigger dunes, restricting development in flood-prone areas and reducing energy use to help curb the impacts of climate change.

“Here, everyone agrees,” Clean Ocean Action Coastal Policy Attorney Sean Dixon said. “This is a non-partisan issue, everyone is willing to do more.”

Congressman Frank Pallone (D-6th) told Clean Ocean Action volunteers that while the public understands the urgency for action on climate change, the political will is not there, especially among his Republican colleagues.

“Climate change opposition has become a religion,” Pallone said. “We have to get this issue away from ideology, politically, we have to get back to a way of thinking about this logically.”

Pallone said state and local response to Hurricane Sandy has lacked long-term focus and planning.

“It is very surprising how few federal strings are attached (to recovery funding),” Pallone said. “The decisions were left up to the state, and you have to change that… I wouldn’t be opposed to the federal government taking over more of what states do.”

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Clean Ocean Action leaders suggested they might mobilize their more than 13,000 volunteers to pressure politicians into taking action, just as they have

lobbied against

a proposed

liquefied natural gas

terminal off of the Monmouth County coastline.

“Putting pressure on is the best way to get results,” Wetzel said. “When people bring you issues, you want to try to find resolve – and 13,000 volunteers is an impressive push.”

The hope is that their efforts will prepare New Jersey to deal with the next storm, and cope with the one to five feet of sea level rise the region will deal with over the next century.

“We believe the program must now evolve to help move toward restoration: Minding the rules of Mother Nature and encouraging environmental stewardship,” Zipf said. “Indeed, it’s not really a choice, it’s a mandate.”