In Deal, an all-too-public quarrel, At the Shore's hottest surf spot, curbside changes

Star Ledger ^

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When the federal and state governments started spending tens of millions of dollars replenishing Monmouth County beaches in the 1990s, the borough of Deal resisted. Chief among its objections, federal and state officials said, was homeowners would have had to allow the public on the wealthy borough's many private beaches.

So as the Army Corps of Engineers moved ahead in other parts of Monmouth with what it says is the world's largest beachfill project, Deal and two neighboring towns, Loch Arbour and Allenhurst, remained untouched. Ironically, that has made this exclusive stretch of shore particularly attractive to a certain segment of the public.

Some like loud music. Many are tattooed. They flock to the ocean at all hours and all times of the year. And rules barring swimmers from private beaches don't apply to them -- because they have boards. Deal, more than ever, is a surfing Mecca.

Beach replenishment often alters wave action, making them unsuitable for surfing. As one Monmouth County surfing spot after another has fallen to the Corps, more and more surfers have converged on Deal, where lavish walled estates are common and the average home sold for $1.38 million in 2004. A number of homeowners in the town have complained about loud music, the crowd of cars at their curbs, and perhaps most frequently, surfers changing in and out of wet suits in public view.

"They're in the raw on the streets. That's prohibited," Deal Mayor Harry Franco said. "You've got women and children. You can't just strip down to your body hair. It's just not right." For their part, some surfers said parking restrictions and hassling by the police in this town of 1,043 residents was an attempt to infringe on their legal right to use the beaches.

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"On an individualized basis many of the people are very, very nice," said Brian Unger of Long Branch, a member of the Surfers' Environmental Alliance. "But they go back in their homes and call the Deal police and they pressure them and they pressure the mayor and the commissioners into enforcing really unreasonable stuff."

OASIS AT THE SHORE

The tensions reflect both the increasing popularity of surfing and the increasing unpopularity -- among surfers -- of beach replenishment. The number of surfers in the United States has increased from 1.7 million in 1999 to 2.3 million last year, according to Board Trac, a market research company that specializes in board sports. Over roughly the same time period, replenishment destroyed several dozen surf breaks in northern Monmouth County, according to surfing advocates like Andrew Mencinsky, executive director of the Surfers' Environmental Alliance.
Replenishment generally makes the slope of a beach less gradual, rendering waves unridable by causing them to crash right on the beach, surfers said. Other breaks are ruined when rock jetties -- treasured by surfers because they cause waves to break offshore -- are submerged by pumped-in sand. Replenished shorelines erode over time, and surf breaks return. Indeed, they are starting to come back in Long Branch and other parts of northern Monmouth County.

In the meantime, Deal serves as an oasis of curls.

While the arrival of Tropical Storm Ernesto is expected to cut back on the surfing for at least a portion of the Labor Day Weekend, great conditions earlier this week -- after three weeks of pancake-flat water -- attracted some 40 surfers at the beach known as the Deal Esplanade. As 17-year-old Matt Ward stepped into his wet suit, he said Deal police were quick to dispense parking tickets, and had once given him a hard time for changing in his car. "I was in a minivan in the middle of winter and a cop pulled up," said Ward, of Holmdel. "He said, 'You know that's indecent exposure. I was like, 'I thought you had to be outside for that.'"

Franco said Deal welcomed surfers as long as they "behave and clean up." "We don't go looking to fine them," he said. "People complain and the police have to respond." Not every Deal homeowner has a problem with surfers. Of two dozen homeowners approached on the subject, only one complained about surfers, and he would only do so anonymously.

CORPS CONCERNS

Franco and other local officials also said their concerns about beach replenishment were not founded in a desire to keep the public off their beaches. Rather they were concerned with the cost to the town, the construction design and the quality of the sand, they said. In fact, Franco said the community is now actively seeking replenishment. However, both David Rosenblatt, who is in charge of beach replenishment projects for the state Department of Environmental Protection, and Douglas Leite, project manager for the Army Corps of Engineers, said privacy concerns were high on the list of Deal's objections to the project in the 1990s. And they said that although continued erosion caused the borough to seek replenishment now, budget constraints make it less likely the federal government will fund the project.

That's just fine with surfers. Access is not as much of an issue for them as for swimmers, because court decisions have established they and anyone else with a flotation device are exempt from bans on swimming at unguarded beaches. But replenishment is a constant threat. Currently, surfers are trying to persuade the Corps to redesign a replenishment project on Long Beach Island and a maintenance project scheduled for a replenished section of Long Branch this winter.

Leite said it was impractical for the Corps to change its work to suit surfers, because their suggestions always amounted to less sand and thus less storm protection. "We've partnered with them, we've listened to them, we've met with them," Leite said. "But we haven't been able to incorporate their comments so that it meets both the hurricane and storm damage protection requirements as well as meets their needs." However, William Rosenblatt, former mayor of Loch Arbour, an avid surfer and national chairman of the Surfrider Foundation, said the Corps had never really tried.

"In some places we've suggested just a different slope, in other places we've suggested a different way to put out the same quantity of sand," said Rosenblatt, who is not related to David Rosenblatt of the DEP. "The DEP and the Army Corps were not ever really willing to partner with surfers." U.S. Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. (D-6th Dist.) said he intended to meet with the Corps, the Environmental Protection Agency, the DEP and surf groups within the next few weeks to try to address surfers' concerns about the Long Branch project. "Neither side will be completely happy," Pallone said. "These things always end up being compromises."