ASBURY PARK, N.J.—Million-dollar condos are rising just off the legendary boardwalk here in what used to be a blue-collar shore town where Bruce Springsteen played as a young musician.
Half an hour south, excavation is making way for luxury homes in Seaside Park at the edge of Island Beach State Park, a mecca for fishers who come in droves to cast lines on the pristine beach. Farther south, in Somers Point, contractors are building townhouses near marshes that were engulfed during Superstorm Sandy in 2012.
Warnings about sea level rise haven’t stopped the building boom at the Jersey Shore even as scientific studies predict increased flooding in the coming decades that will eventually affect not just the shoreline but inland communities as well.
New regulations that mandate more stringent construction standards and flood protections and factor in an ever-increasing rise in sea level by 2100 are facing strong resistance from business and political leaders up and down the coast.
The battle is being fought in the courts and in the state legislature, where Senate President Nicholas Scutari, a Democrat, introduced a resolution that would essentially kill the new measures.
