A slow-moving nor'easter dumped driftwood, garbage and other debris across Union Beach's shoreline late last month, shutting down the borough's Front Street beach for days. But the rock jetties and widened sand beneath that mess did something the Jersey Shore town hadn't been able to count on before: they held. Union Beach Mayor Charles Cocuzza says the borough's roughly $395 million federal flood mitigation project did exactly what residents had hoped it would do when the storm hit.
A Storm That Tested a Sandy-Scarred Town
“It did exactly what everyone had hoped,” Cocuzza said, crediting the ongoing U.S. Army Corps of Engineers project with sparing Union Beach from more significant damage, according to nj.com. The storm still left its mark: creeks around town flooded streets before the tide receded, and Union Beach saw water pile up over four separate high tide cycles. Cocuzza said the borough's beach along Front Street had been closed since the weekend because debris covered multiple jetties and stretches of sand, forcing the public works department to spend several days clearing rock formations before the beach could reopen, which officials expected to happen within several days.
The storm wasn't unique to Union Beach. The nj.com report notes that the nor'easter caused what officials in several shore towns described as the worst beach erosion since Hurricane Sandy. States of emergency remained in effect across eight New Jersey counties — Atlantic, Burlington, Cape May, Cumberland, Middlesex, Monmouth, Ocean and Salem — as of September 28, 2026, and shore leaders told NBC Philadelphia that federal funding would be critical to rebuilding the damaged beaches and dunes.
Why Union Beach Was So Exposed
The stakes for Union Beach trace directly back to 2012. During Hurricane Sandy, about 90% of the borough's land flooded, with water reaching depths of 2 to 10 feet in many neighborhoods, a finding reported in a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers report. Sandy destroyed 60 properties in the borough outright and substantially damaged more than 600 others. The borough's population dropped from more than 6,200 residents to roughly 5,500, as high rebuilding and home-elevation costs drove away people who could no longer afford to stay, the report notes.
Preliminary steps toward shielding Union Beach date back to the 1990s, but the project was fast-tracked only after Sandy devastated the town. Before construction, the borough's beach was described as very small, not spanning the entire waterfront. The Army Corps announced the first contract award for the Union Beach Coastal Storm Risk Reduction Project in July 2022, and construction work formally got underway the following spring, according to a separate Army Corps announcement.
What's Built, and What's Still Coming
The project's completed first phase widened the borough's beach, replenished sand along the shoreline, constructed jetties to reduce erosion, and built dunes and berms to blunt wave impacts. That work reportedly guarded oceanfront homes during several earlier storms after new sand was added, and during Tropical Storm Ophelia as well, per the same nj.com account. Future phases are slated to add two tide gates, three pump stations, about 1.2 miles of levees and nearly a mile of flood walls — infrastructure that hasn't been built yet. Phase 2 construction may begin in 2026, but that timeline depends on the borough completing required property acquisitions.
Union Beach wasn't alone in leaning on new federal armor this storm season. In the Holgate section of Long Beach Township, the nor'easter cut the buffer between homes and the ocean from about 150 feet to roughly 50 feet, and Mayor Joseph Mancini called it the worst erosion the area had seen since Sandy, as reported by NBC Philadelphia. Even so, Mancini said the dunes protected every oceanfront property in town. Ocean City saw a similar result: Mayor Jay Gillian said a roughly $99 million Army Corps replenishment project there meant the ocean never breached the city's dune system during the storm, according to nj.com's storm coverage.
Not every community fared as well. In Sea Bright, officials said 67 people needed rescue during the storm, including 45 pulled from flooded homes, ABC7 New York reported. Six boats broke free from the Keyport Yacht Club during the nor'easter, with three running aground across the harbor at Cliffwood Beach. The federal government is expected to cover about 65% of the Union Beach project's total cost, with the state and borough splitting the remaining 35% — an investment that, for now, appears to be paying off even as cleanup continues along the rest of the shore.
