Santa’s helpers traveled a long distance to make a special stop in Baton Rouge this weekend, though not from quite so far away as the North Pole.

A New York-based nonprofit group created to help Superstorm Sandy flood victims in Long Island decided to play the Santa helper role for flood victims in Louisiana’s capital city this Christmas season.

The group, Adopt a House, assisted by a social media networking group, Sandy Support Massapequa Style, co-hosted a Christmas party on Saturday for 50 Baton Rouge children, ranging from 2 to 12 years old, whose families had been affected by the flooding in August.

The party, which took place at the LSU Hilltop Arboretum, featured holiday-themed crafts, face painting and, of course, a visit from Santa Claus.

Adopt a House is dedicated to supporting the Long Island community in rebuilding in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, which tore through the east coast in late October of 2012. Sandy Support Massapequa Style is a Facebook group of close to 900 members that has worked with Adopt a House in co-hosting events like the one held Saturday in Baton Rouge.

“We’re an organization that’s been dealing with Sandy up here in New York, so we totally understand what it’s like, especially that first Christmas,” Adopt a House executive director Michele Insinga said. “So we just wanted to give back to the community as others had given to us four years ago.”

Insinga said the party grew out of the organization’s involvement with a Louisiana-based Facebook group called “Adopt a Louisiana Family For Christmas!” The group invites sponsors to connect with and donate to flood victims.

Prior to hosting the party, Adopt a House connected with several families through the Facebook group and was able to send presents to 37 children.

Beth Henry, an Adopt a House volunteer and creator of Sandy Support Massapequa Style, played a big role in organizing the party. She said Adopt a House knew early on that it wanted to provide support for the affected families during the holiday season, but had just a week-and-a-half notice from a donor that its members would have the opportunity to host a party.

Making everything come together on such short notice, she said, was something of a “Christmas miracle.”

“This weekend four years ago, I was at a party like this for my girls when we lost our house after Hurricane Sandy,” Henry said. “It was really, really important for me to make this a great event because it’s all about paying it forward when we can.”

Baton Rouge resident Lisa LeDoux and her daughter Finley are just two of the many Louisianians who are still unable to move back into their homes. Their family has been displaced since Aug. 12, the day the flooding started, and LeDoux saw the Christmas party as a way to reward her daughter for “how big of a trooper she had been.”

“She’s been awesome throughout this whole process,” LeDoux said. “I saw that and I normally wouldn’t reach out to something like this, but thought she could use a great day, and it’s been perfect.”

The pair said their favorite part of the day was seeing Santa pulling up to the party in a red Ferrari decorated with holiday wreaths and toting his iconic bag of gifts.

A pair of elves decked out in red and white striped tights and colorful hats sang classic Christmas songs like “Santa Claus Is Coming to To Town” and “Jingle Bells” as they ushered the children to gather around Santa’s chair, where their gifts had been laid out.

One by one Santa called the kids up to receive a Christmas present, which had been individually purchased for them by the Adopt a House volunteers based on their Christmas lists. The gifts included sets of blocks and kits filled with markers and other art supplies.

Insinga said one of the main goals in throwing the party was to take the children out of their difficult situations for a day, giving them a chance to experience the holiday season even though their families might be dealing with serious financial burdens.

“Maybe their parents don’t have time to go bring them to go see Santa,” she said. “They may not have the money to give them this year because of the obvious reasons. But we just wanted them to have something so that they weren’t forgotten in the holiday season because this is what people did for us in that first year.”

• BY ROSE VELAZQUEZ | Special to The Advocate

http://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/article_ede036e2-c54c-11e6-b2c0-573caab143d3.html

OCEAN COUNTY, N.J. (CBS) — A New Jersey man is facing charges for scamming individuals who had their homes damaged during Superstorm Sandy. Charges against Jamie Lawson, 41, were announced on Friday.

Ocean County Prosecutor Joseph D. Coronato announced that a grand jury indicted Lawson, the owner of Lawson Renovations, L.L.C., DBA J&N Construction.

Authorities say Lawson took payment from 14 homeowners in Toms River and Brick Township and either did none of the work promised, or less than what was agreed to. They add that the money went toward vehicles and Lawson’s personal expenses.

The Ocean County Prosecutor’s Office added that Lawson became a licensed home improvement contractor when he moved to New Jersey shortly after Superstorm Sandy hit. They say that Lawson obtained the license after misrepresenting himself on his application by failing to disclose criminal convictions in North Carolina, South Carolina and Texas.

Lawson has been charged with money laundering, theft by failure to make required disposition, tampering with public records and related charges.

Anyone who believes that they were defrauded by Lawson’s company are asked to contact the Ocean County Prosecutor’s Office at 732 929 2027

December 16, 2016 4:31 PM By Ray Boyd

Contractor Charged For Scamming Individuals With Homes Damaged In Superstorm Sandy

New Jersey and federal agencies have announced a joint study to examine ways to combat flooding on the state’s back bays, which were where some of the worst flooding happened four years when Superstorm Sandy barreled into the shore.

The pain continues for many communities that were pummeled by the historic storm. Shore towns have watched as government agencies rushed to build sand dunes along beaches but failed to construct similar flood protection measures along the bay shores, in the areas between the mainland and barrier islands.

To many communities, the announced study by the state Department of Environmental Protection and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is welcome — if years too late.

“This isn’t the first disaster in America,” said George Kasimos, whose Toms River home flooded during Sandy, at a public meeting Thursday. “As soon as that disaster came, within that first year, there should’ve been a plan.”

How it will work

The New Jersey Back Bays Study actually started in April after spinning off of a larger study of the entire North Atlantic Coast, which the Corps of Engineers began a year and a half after Sandy, said  J. Bailey Smith, the project manager who will oversee the back bay study.

DEP and Corps of Engineers will first analyze the physical features of the coast and compile flood probability data before identifying possible flood protection measures.

Those measures fall into four broad categories: changes to regional policies and the creation of new programs, structural measures such as bulkheads and levees, non-structural measures like buyouts and flood warning systems, and nature-based methods like reefs.

The study is expected to last three years and likely would not result in the construction of any new projects before its completion, officials said.

“This is a more complex issue and problem to address than, say, beach erosion. And it took a very long time to get where we are with beach erosion,” said Bill Dixon, the DEP’s director of coastal engineering.

“I see different methods being used in different areas” for the back bay study, he said.

Nonetheless, the Corps of Engineers’ Bailey said that does not mean that the state’s bay shores will remain completely vulnerable to flooding in the short term.

“We have a lot of similar, smaller projects that are ongoing and may be constructed in the next three to five years,” said Bailey.

The study will encompass 3,500 miles of bay shoreline in Burlington, Ocean, Atlantic, Cape May, and Monmouth Counties.

‘Caught with our pants down’

For Lacey Township resident Pat Doyle, back bay flooding is old hat. She welcomed the announcement but said the problem of bay flooding was nothing novel to residents who regularly cope with encroaching waters.

“We were caught with our pants down badly during Sandy,” said Doyle, “and we shouldn’t have been.”

Others in the audience during a public meeting Thursday night at Stockton University argued that the long delay in starting the three-year study will now be followed by another delay in starting construction on the flood protection projects recommended by the study.

“So, the true answer for most of the people in my neighborhood is this is being built for your children, because they won’t live long enough to see it?” asked Paul Jeffrey, president of the Ortley Beach Voters and Taxpayers Association. “That’s sad.”

Dixon, with DEP, said it would have been difficult for the state to embark on such an undertaking on its own. DEP and Corps of Engineers are splitting the costs of the back bay study.

He also claimed that authorities have not been ignoring the needs of back bay communities by largely focusing on flood protection projects on the oceanfront beaches. The reason for that, according to Dixon, was because the state identified oceanfront flooding as a major problem long before it realized back bay flooding also required attention.

“Studies like this [for ocean flooding] were implemented back in the 90s. So the reason why these projects are being implemented now on the oceanfront is we’ve gotten through all this process.”
Dixon also said the state was actively trying to minimize the effect of bay shore flooding by, for example, buying out residents living on the Delaware and Raritan Bays through the Green Acres program.

Kasimos, the Toms River homeowner who also founded the group Stop FEMA Now after Sandy, said the announcement was another in a long line of government failures on this issue.

“If there were lobbyists in here and there were big funders in here, this would’ve gotten done already,” said Kasimos.

“Look, government is inefficient by nature, I get that. But the response since Sandy — state and federal —  is piss-poor.”

http://www.newsworks.org/index.php/local/item/99368-four-years-after-superstorm-sandy-state-and-federal-agencies-to-study-back-bay-flooding

For years, the conflicting goals of protecting the environment and some of the New Jersey shore’s priciest real estate from storms have bedeviled a body of water known as Wreck Pond.

Storms sometimes open a channel between the 48-acre tidal pond and the ocean, but governments keep sealing it shut to protect homes from flooding. The result has been poor water quality and much narrower access to the ocean that hurts fish that travel from ocean to pond to breed.

But a program that sprang from resiliency planning after Superstorm Sandy is addressing both problems at once. The main phase of the work has been completed, consisting of a concrete culvert between the pond and the ocean to make it easier for fish, including herring, to reach the sea.

“This is a demonstration of how we can restore the coastal ecology of the Jersey shore while at the same time keeping communities safe from future storms,” said Tim Dillingham, executive director of the American Littoral Society, the coastal advocacy group that oversaw construction. “We’re restoring a piece of the ecology that has been lost.”

The inlet at Wreck Pond has come and gone over the decades. Its very name came from shipwrecks that used to occur when the inlet was open in the 1800s; the Sea Girt lighthouse was built to illuminate it. In the 1600s, Lenape Indians came to the inlet for bathing rituals and clam feasts. Records from the 1920s show the inlet still open, but fairly shallow and often clogged with sand.

In May 1938, Wreck Pond was dammed off from the ocean in the name of protecting the oceanfront communities on either side of it from flood damage from surging ocean waters. Two weeks later, the ocean broke through, and the first of many years of repair and maintenance work ensued.

Most recently, Sandy re-opened it in 2012, but drifting sand naturally reclosed it within two weeks, and government crews reinforced it as part of a beach replenishment project.

But in reducing the danger of one type of flooding — ocean waves surging into the pond — dams inadvertently raised the risk of a different type of flooding, from heavy rainfall that swells the pond beyond its banks. The tunnel will give that water someplace to go.

In addition to letting fish in and out more easily, the culvert can be opened or closed as needed during storms to control flooding.

It’s akin to an express lane for fish, but people will benefit, too. The project enables officials to better control water levels in the pond during storms, and dramatically improves water quality by flushing it regularly with infusions of ocean water, preventing bacteria and algae blooms from choking it.

And it should reduce, if not eliminate altogether, the frequent ocean beach closings that result when even a small amount of rain falls, sending harmful bacteria into the ocean.

The work is part of $7.4 million worth of work in and around the pond, financed by federal, state, county and local governments.

The Littoral Society has been monitoring fish traffic and is pleased to see large volumes of river herring and other species using it to get to and from the pond.

“There was a time when the pond had a bountiful natural fish population,” said Spring Lake Mayor Jennifer Naughton. “With the increased flow of salt water into the pond, we expect to see a significant increase in water quality.”

Wayne Parry Of The Associated Press

http://www.mcall.com/news/nationworld/mc-jersey-shore-fish-channel-20161123-story.html

A New Jersey motel owner who stole more than $81,000 in federal disaster relief funds by falsely claiming he had sheltered Superstorm Sandy victims is now headed to prison.

Sandipkumar Patel received a three-year sentence Friday. The 44-year-old Edison man had pleaded guilty in September to theft by deception and has paid full restitution.

State authorities say Patel fraudulently took $81,567 from a Federal Emergency Management Agency program that paid hotels and motels for rooms temporarily occupied by victims.

Patel and his wife own the American Motel in Toms River.

Authorities say Patel falsely billed FEMA for 11 supposed victims, including eight of whom never stayed at the motel. The three others stayed for shorter periods than were billed or shared a room that Patel had already billed to FEMA.

http://6abc.com/news/motel-owner-sentenced-for-stealing-superstorm-sandy-funds/1592720/

Demands for repayment of grants used for rebuilding, threats of foreclosure are only two of the troubles Sandy victims now have to deal with

TOM JOHNSON | OCTOBER 28, 2016

http://www.njspotlight.com/stories/16/10/27/hurricane-sandy-survivors-face-a-new-threat-from-the-state/