Following Superstorm Sandy, responsibility for maintenance and recovery of New Jersey’s state-maintained navigation channels shifted to the New Jersey Department of Transportation’s Office of Maritime Resources (NJDOT OMR). Immediately following the storm, NJDOT OMR implemented a system-wide data collection and prioritization program to restore the state-maintained marine transportation system’s (MTS) channels and dredged material storage facilities to a state of good repair. In addition to the Port of New York & New Jersey, a multi-billion-dollar fishing industry, and hundreds of marinas, the NJ MTS consists of over 370 nautical kilometers of state-maintained channels and nearly 70 dredged material confined disposal facilities (CDFs). Bathymetric surveys and over 5,000 sediment cores were collected from 209 of NJ’s 216 state-maintained channels within 5 months. To assist coordination of these surveys and sampling, OMR solicited the participation of numerous stakeholders, including the US Army Corps of Engineers, US Coast Guard, NJ State Police, and design consultants from WSP and Gahagan & Bryant Associates (GBA). To establish a sequential recovery plan for the NJ MTS, the state-maintained channels were prioritized based on economics, social importance, and other factors. After 5 years, the MTS recovery is still on-going, though significant progress has been made. The extent of impacts to navigation within the channels and dredged material storage capacity have been computed for pre-storm, post-storm, and current conditions using post-storm damage assessments, sediment core sample analysis, and bathymetric surveys. Analysis of these values for channels both singularly and system-wide, and for individual CDFs and system-wide dredged material storage capacity, portray not only the resilience but also the anti-fragility of the NJ MTS, as values have improved to better than pre-storm levels. The recovery efforts have also demonstrated a feasible link between resilience and sustainability by focusing on beneficial use of dredged material to restore damaged CDFs, restoration of habitat degraded from underwater slides, and restoration of degraded coastal marsh via placement of dredged material. A case study of a multi-agency cooperative marsh restoration pilot program in Fortescue, New Jersey is provided, which demonstrates significant additional potential for enhancing the resilience of the NJ MTS. As a result of the post-storm prioritization and recovery planning, a shift in public sentiment regarding dredging, OMR’s focus on establishing a sustainable dredging program, and availability of recovery funding, the NJ state-maintained MTS is on pace to not simply recover to pre-storm conditions, but to recover to a higher level of resilience than before the storm.
Keywords: Recovery planning, dredged material, beneficial use, marsh enhancement, thin-layer placement, confined disposal facility