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The Drowning of Money Island: A Forgotten Community's Fight Against the Rising Seas Threatening Coastal America
Offers a glimpse of the future of vanishing shorelines in America in the age of climate change, where the wealthy will be able to remain the longest while the poor will be forced to leave.
Journalist Andrew Lewis chronicles the struggle of his New Jersey hometown to rebuild their ravaged homes in the face of the same environmental stresses and governmental neglect that are endangering coastal areas throughout the United States. Lewis grew up on the Bayshore, a 40-mile stretch of Delaware Bay beaches, marshland, and fishing hamlets at the southern end of New Jersey, whose working-class community is fighting to retain their place in a country that has left them behind. The Bayshore, like so many rural places in the US, is under immense pressure from a combination of severe economic decline, industry loss, and regulation. But it is also contending with one of the fastest rates of sea level rise on the planet and the aftereffects of one of the most destructive hurricanes in American history, Superstorm Sandy. If in the years prior to Sandy the Bayshore had already been slowly disappearing, its beaches eroding and lowland cedar woods hollowing out into saltwater-bleached ghost forests, after the hurricane, the community was decimated. Today, homes and roads and memories are crumbling into the rising bay.
Cumberland, the poor, rural county where the Bayshore is located, had been left out of the bulk of the initial federal disaster relief package post-Sandy. Instead of money to rebuild, the Bayshore got the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection’s Superstorm Sandy Blue Acres Program, which identified and purchased flood-prone neighborhoods where working-class citizens lived, then demolished them to be converted to open space.
The Drowning of Money Island is an intimate yet unbiased, lyrical yet investigative portrait of a rural community ravaged by sea level rise and economic hardship, as well as the increasingly divisive politics those factors have helped spawn. It invites us to confront how climate change is already intensifying preexisting inequality.
Journalist Andrew Lewis chronicles the struggle of his New Jersey hometown to rebuild their ravaged homes in the face of the same environmental stresses and governmental neglect that are endangering coastal areas throughout the United States. Lewis grew up on the Bayshore, a 40-mile stretch of Delaware Bay beaches, marshland, and fishing hamlets at the southern end of New Jersey, whose working-class community is fighting to retain their place in a country that has left them behind. The Bayshore, like so many rural places in the US, is under immense pressure from a combination of severe economic decline, industry loss, and regulation. But it is also contending with one of the fastest rates of sea level rise on the planet and the aftereffects of one of the most destructive hurricanes in American history, Superstorm Sandy. If in the years prior to Sandy the Bayshore had already been slowly disappearing, its beaches eroding and lowland cedar woods hollowing out into saltwater-bleached ghost forests, after the hurricane, the community was decimated. Today, homes and roads and memories are crumbling into the rising bay.
Cumberland, the poor, rural county where the Bayshore is located, had been left out of the bulk of the initial federal disaster relief package post-Sandy. Instead of money to rebuild, the Bayshore got the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection’s Superstorm Sandy Blue Acres Program, which identified and purchased flood-prone neighborhoods where working-class citizens lived, then demolished them to be converted to open space.
The Drowning of Money Island is an intimate yet unbiased, lyrical yet investigative portrait of a rural community ravaged by sea level rise and economic hardship, as well as the increasingly divisive politics those factors have helped spawn. It invites us to confront how climate change is already intensifying preexisting inequality.
232 pages, Hardcover
Published October 1, 2019
11 people are currently reading
849 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
November 20, 2019
I won this book in a goodreads drawing.
After the storm Sandy a few years ago, the areas of the Jersey Shore worst affected never really recovered. In fact, the people are abandoning the area. Some corporation is benefitting.
"We're from the government and we're here to help" remains one of the most frightening phrases in the English language. The author has no real solutions, but describes the grinding gears of government well.
After the storm Sandy a few years ago, the areas of the Jersey Shore worst affected never really recovered. In fact, the people are abandoning the area. Some corporation is benefitting.
"We're from the government and we're here to help" remains one of the most frightening phrases in the English language. The author has no real solutions, but describes the grinding gears of government well.
June 28, 2019
Money Island, New Jersey is the name of a community, not an island. So you don’t say people on Money Island, you say people in Money Island. That is as fascinating as it gets as Andrew Lewis closely examines The Drowning of Money Island. It is a comprehensive history of a small oystering community that began in the Depression years and has slid ever since. Between the rising of the seas, the sinking of the land and the disappearance of any kind of meaningful employment, there is little to talk about, except nostalgic memories. And that is what this book is: a great deal of detailed description, a small clutch of characters who have little to do with each other, and not much in the way of narrative outside of a timeline of bitter disappointments since Hurricane Sandy, the reason Lewis went back there. The book is almost an ethnographic study of the remaining residents.
What pushed Money Island and the Bayshore community into oblivion was Sandy in 2013. Emergency funds for the state did not trickle down to the south coast like they did to the Jersey Shore (the east coast). Instead, they got daily health code violations for their broken septic systems – even if they had abandoned their unfixable or even missing houses. Repairs and compliance costs would easily exceed the value of the property. Politicians were unconvinced there was any point to throwing good money after bad and restoring the communities – to what exactly? They couldn’t even answer that question.
The book is therefore and necessarily about the diehards, who provide the examples and the color for this history. They drink. They patch things up. They try to ignore their circumstances. It’s still grim.
Lewis clearly points out New Jersey’s state of environmental denial early on. Since the 90s, 177 million cubic yards of sand have been pumped onto Jersey Shore beaches, much of which just washes away again. The cost has been nearly $2 billion. People should not be allowed to live there, demonstrably at taxpayer expense, but no one considers abandoning the Jersey Shore. Money Island, however, is clearly expendable. Few people, little infrastructure, and way too many man-eating bugs. Let it sink.
The state created a $300 million fund out of federal disaster relief (the Blue Acres Program), to buy up homes from those willing to sell out. With their houses essentially worthless, the amounts on offer are derisory. Blue Acres also causes bickering and divisions where remainers (resisters) consider the sellers traitors. But so many had no insurance and impossible repair bills, tax bills and code violations, they welcomed a sale. And no one else is making offers. So what little was left by Sandy is being carted to the dump by the state.
The Drowning of Money Island is no white knuckle roller coaster ride. It is flat and depressing, enlivened only by Lewis’ nostalgic accounts of growing up in the area. There is no climax, unless you think a long overdue government grant for infrastructure is a Cinderella moment. The past was the American Dream, the present is a nightmare and the future is grim.
David Wineberg
What pushed Money Island and the Bayshore community into oblivion was Sandy in 2013. Emergency funds for the state did not trickle down to the south coast like they did to the Jersey Shore (the east coast). Instead, they got daily health code violations for their broken septic systems – even if they had abandoned their unfixable or even missing houses. Repairs and compliance costs would easily exceed the value of the property. Politicians were unconvinced there was any point to throwing good money after bad and restoring the communities – to what exactly? They couldn’t even answer that question.
The book is therefore and necessarily about the diehards, who provide the examples and the color for this history. They drink. They patch things up. They try to ignore their circumstances. It’s still grim.
Lewis clearly points out New Jersey’s state of environmental denial early on. Since the 90s, 177 million cubic yards of sand have been pumped onto Jersey Shore beaches, much of which just washes away again. The cost has been nearly $2 billion. People should not be allowed to live there, demonstrably at taxpayer expense, but no one considers abandoning the Jersey Shore. Money Island, however, is clearly expendable. Few people, little infrastructure, and way too many man-eating bugs. Let it sink.
The state created a $300 million fund out of federal disaster relief (the Blue Acres Program), to buy up homes from those willing to sell out. With their houses essentially worthless, the amounts on offer are derisory. Blue Acres also causes bickering and divisions where remainers (resisters) consider the sellers traitors. But so many had no insurance and impossible repair bills, tax bills and code violations, they welcomed a sale. And no one else is making offers. So what little was left by Sandy is being carted to the dump by the state.
The Drowning of Money Island is no white knuckle roller coaster ride. It is flat and depressing, enlivened only by Lewis’ nostalgic accounts of growing up in the area. There is no climax, unless you think a long overdue government grant for infrastructure is a Cinderella moment. The past was the American Dream, the present is a nightmare and the future is grim.
David Wineberg
September 3, 2019
This is a book about disasters – not just Superstorm Sandy which took out a lot of beach property, but more to the point, the aftermath of that storm, as the state of New Jersey seeks to spend disaster-relief monies and chooses to redevelop the “rich” side of the Bayshore area and to purchase/demolish the less successful neighborhoods and turn them into open land. Lewis’ book takes an unbiased look at rising sea levels, storms and the impact on whole communities who have relied on these shorelines for decades. The fallout brought on by New Jersey’s decisions has included major political rifts and the knowledge that we face a future when poor people will not be able to stay while wealthy people can continue to live along these fragile lands. He exposes the need for a serious conversation about the future of all of us as nature continues to make major changes to our lives.
February 22, 2020
I live in New Jersey but had never heard of the Bayshore or Money Island or any of the places the author writes about. I was glad to read about this overlooked region. I'm not sure I want to visit -- gnats and mosquitoes, no thank you!
However, I'm not sure the author knew what kind of book he wanted to write. It's part participatory journalism -- inserting himself into the community -- part memoir (his upbringing nearby) and part science tome. I couldn't really stay engaged.
Even though Superstorm Sandy is a primary focus of the book, the author never addresses the storm and how it affected the Money Island community. He says people evacuated, but then he switches gears and goes into the history of the region and then returns to the current-day situation. We don't experience the shock of the residents' return to their homes. Were they destroyed? What was the cleanup like? Did some people never return? I couldn't really become invested in the people he embeds with, because I didn't experience their tragedy.
The science of how coastal communities are disappearing (rising seas, subsidence, drained aquifers) was interesting to a point, but off-putting in its detail. At times, the book feels like a textbook. All in all, I think this book might have made a better longform article.
However, I'm not sure the author knew what kind of book he wanted to write. It's part participatory journalism -- inserting himself into the community -- part memoir (his upbringing nearby) and part science tome. I couldn't really stay engaged.
Even though Superstorm Sandy is a primary focus of the book, the author never addresses the storm and how it affected the Money Island community. He says people evacuated, but then he switches gears and goes into the history of the region and then returns to the current-day situation. We don't experience the shock of the residents' return to their homes. Were they destroyed? What was the cleanup like? Did some people never return? I couldn't really become invested in the people he embeds with, because I didn't experience their tragedy.
The science of how coastal communities are disappearing (rising seas, subsidence, drained aquifers) was interesting to a point, but off-putting in its detail. At times, the book feels like a textbook. All in all, I think this book might have made a better longform article.
September 14, 2019
The way hurricanes are going this century, the type of stories told in this book will be told again and again and again, by many people in many places. Mother Nature is obviously out to reclaim the wetlands, wetlands that has been developed and overdeveloped since white men set foot on it. Make the wetlands farmland. Drain, drain, drain to try to control the mosquito population. Build, build, build. Destroy, destroy, destroy.
While some probably believe rich people are the only ones living on the water, this book gives a more accurate view of who actually lives on the water, and who has lived on the water year round for generations. Many working-class individuals, people who don’t have ready cash on hand to rebuild houses battered or destroyed by storms.
People who live in areas of states that aren’t making the state enough money, so they are being abandoned by the government. Or being bought out, when they don’t want to move away from the only place they have ever called home. People with money have more options and more clout with government officials. Nevertheless, Mother Nature will always win in the end, not the rich or the poor or the middle class.
(Note: I received a free ARC of this book from Amazon Vine.)
While some probably believe rich people are the only ones living on the water, this book gives a more accurate view of who actually lives on the water, and who has lived on the water year round for generations. Many working-class individuals, people who don’t have ready cash on hand to rebuild houses battered or destroyed by storms.
People who live in areas of states that aren’t making the state enough money, so they are being abandoned by the government. Or being bought out, when they don’t want to move away from the only place they have ever called home. People with money have more options and more clout with government officials. Nevertheless, Mother Nature will always win in the end, not the rich or the poor or the middle class.
(Note: I received a free ARC of this book from Amazon Vine.)
May 28, 2020
I liked this book more than I expected to, considering that I have not spent much time or have much interested in the East Coast (both reasons why I selected this title). For me, what drew me in was the perfect balance of personal narrative, area history, and interviews with the characters. I drew several parallels between the book I just finished, "The Swamp," about the history of Florida's Everglades and the state's battle with living with or without it, and my own experience living in the south during the 2017 hurricane season.
This book was a pleasant surprise, not because it was a feel-good story (indeed, the situation at Bayshore remains dire), but because it shines a light on the tensions between coastal communities who want respect and restoration vs. environmental groups and federal agencies who force their retreat.
This book was a pleasant surprise, not because it was a feel-good story (indeed, the situation at Bayshore remains dire), but because it shines a light on the tensions between coastal communities who want respect and restoration vs. environmental groups and federal agencies who force their retreat.
November 29, 2020
I received a copy of this book through the Amazon Vine program in exchange for an honest review.
This is an interesting book.
We explore the Bayshore area of New Jersey following Hurricane Sandy. With homes damaged and political tensions high Money Island is an interesting place to learn about. It's at the intersection of things considered political, such as climate change as sea levels rise, and life in the modern world.
We learn about residents who lost their homes and those who want to stay in the area but don't get the support they need from FEMA. We also get the perspective of those who thought they would receive help from the Trump administration.
Overall it's an informative read!
This is an interesting book.
We explore the Bayshore area of New Jersey following Hurricane Sandy. With homes damaged and political tensions high Money Island is an interesting place to learn about. It's at the intersection of things considered political, such as climate change as sea levels rise, and life in the modern world.
We learn about residents who lost their homes and those who want to stay in the area but don't get the support they need from FEMA. We also get the perspective of those who thought they would receive help from the Trump administration.
Overall it's an informative read!
February 22, 2021
By examining the reality of a small Delaware Bay coastal town's battle to survive against the continually rising tides that global warming is causing, Andrew Lewis presents us with a vision of the frightening future awaiting many communities along coastlines everywhere. There are so many questions from the political, economical, environmental, and societal perspectives that will drive the decisions for these communities as Lewis's reporting presents to us in this real-life drama already playing out in Money Island. This book gives a very human perspective on the fight of this one community in New Jersey.
November 14, 2021
This book will appeal to two constituencies--those who know the coastal areas of South Jersey well and those who take a keen interest in the strains within campaigns to correct environmental problems one crisis at a time. Why I read between the lines is that clearer communication among those supporting similar goals is needed, but that goals supporting both wildlife and resident communities co-existing with them require thoughtful articulation. Left to drift, goals are defined whoever the next candidate for office happens to be.
December 9, 2019
The Drowning of Money Island tells the story of a community along Delaware Bay in southern New Jersey and its fight against rising sea level. I particularly enjoyed author Andrew S. Lewis's descriptions of the people and places that he visited in documenting this story.
I received a free review copy of The Drowning of Money Island through Goodreads Giveaways.
I received a free review copy of The Drowning of Money Island through Goodreads Giveaways.
December 11, 2019
Even if it is inevitable that the coastal bay towns can't fight back the rising bay water make sur you get there and explore. The coastal Delaware Bay Area and it’s marshes are rich with life and sound, and story. Enjoy! Someday the roads will be differant for now plan your trip to not be out on the marsh roads when high tide is coming. Great story.
February 17, 2020
This is a factual account of what happens to a remote part of South Jersey over the last 100 years give or take. What was once a thriving fishing community decays to a ghost town due to encroaching water. Not much of a government bailout for this town.
June 28, 2023
Having moved down to Down Jersey (as opposed to South Jersey, since we already lived in South Jersey) two years ago, I have had this book on my list of books to read for a while now. It gave me a better sense of some of the undercurrents and behaviour that I was meeting.
December 1, 2019
I expect books that tell me about what's happening to the environment. I don't always expect a book that tells me to whom it's happening. That's what "Money Island" accomplishes as it describes the trials and tribulations of the working poor people of the New Jersey Bayshore. The increasingly angry sea is reclaiming this area by the year, and the folks who live there have such a poor relationship with governmental institutions - including environmental ones - that they're skeptical of both the science and the solutions. Because in the end, there's only one: move away. And they don't want to do that. Read my entire review at Think Progress.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews