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High surf and heavy flooding from Hurricane Sandy left a home on an island, literally, at the base of the Mantoloking Bridge after the ocean cut a breached the barrier island and met Barnegat Bay.

(Andrew Mills/The Star-Ledger)

You’d think the Christie administration’s first major overhaul of rules regulating coastal construction since Hurricane Sandy would focus on lessons learned, and how we can better protect ourselves against future storms.

But no. Believe it or not, its new policies ignore the science of sea-level rise and all the dire warnings and new studies about climate change in the nearly two years since the storm hit.

In the first public hearing on the more-than-1,000-page proposal last week, critics questioned why the administration is all but silent on these issues. This is worse than just a missed opportunity, they argued: The new rules actually ease the requirements for risky developments along our coastline.

Remember, we are already rebuilding Sandy-damaged homes using flood elevation standards that don’t incorporate sea-level rise. The Christie administration is required to plan around sea-level rise in order to use federal Sandy relief money to rebuild vital infrastructure, but the state is not forced to do so for housing.

As a result, on our governor's watch, other states hit by Sandy, including New York, Delaware and Maryland, are all rebuilding higher than we are.

They’re using an additional 2-foot buffer above the federally recommended elevation for rebuilding — what Rutgers scientists recommended for New Jersey. Gov. Chris Christie mandated only a 1-foot buffer, which won’t last us long, given rising sea levels. Some towns have taken the initiative to build higher homes, but local political push-back can make that tough.

Just last week, two new reports warned our state to ramp up its efforts to respond to sea-level rise. One, from a bipartisan group of business leaders called the Risky Business Project, found that the Jersey Shore will likely see more than 200 percent increase in annual storm damage by the end of the century, costing our state between $1.4 billion and $3.7 billion.

Hurricane Sandy alone is estimated to have cost some $30 billion in damage to New Jersey. But the Christie administration is ignoring that economic toll and our increased vulnerability in its rebuilding plans. Thanks to its new coastal construction rules, we’ll see hazardous housing units multiply along the Jersey Shore. The rules make it easier to build two houses in a high-risk flood zone with the same type of general permit that was once available only to a single-family house or one duplex.

They also double down on a controversial policy adopted last year, which allows the state and towns to shave off the tops off dunes — which may be more scenic, but diminishes a much-needed safeguard against storm surges. When dunes are allowed to grow naturally, vegetation anchors the sand, making them far more protective.

The new rules would allow marinas to build restaurants, instead of reserving them strictly for water-dependent uses such as boats. This is intended to help the local economy revive after Sandy.

But as the Risky Business Project report argued, that strategy is short-sighted. Because whatever private profits and tax revenues we get from new coastal development now will only become a liability in the future. Sandy proved this to the tune of billions of dollars. Preparing for climate change is better for the economy long-term, and the administration’s rules don’t recognize that.

There’s also nothing here that says how our state is going to roll back development in high risk ocean front areas with repeat damage — some of which have willing sellers who can no longer afford to stay.

Sandy showed us the folly of building up along the water’s edge. It’s so simple it shouldn’t need to be said: Why create new government policies that put more people’s lives and property at risk?

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