I guess bayonne, jersey city, hoboken, staten island, elizabeth, bay head, belmar, toms river, perth amboy, long branch are all on barrier islands?
Seriously though, the first thing you do to protect a populated, ocean facing coastline, is deposit compacted sand or accropodes or large rocks as a barrier. A barrier island with homes and businesses on it can no longer protect people and property from the ocean, because the barrier island is not a fixed feature, they change over time & the function it served is now removed as well.
Also, these artificial barriers would take a few notches out of the storm surge impact, wave action, and, longer term, zoning changes and buying out people in flood prone areas would go a very long way in addressing both ocean level rise, and storm impacts.
Hard barriers along large sections of the coast farther up towards long branch into the hudson are what will be needed if you dont want water washing things away and flooding basements and power plants/substations & rail yards. Additional options include requiring empty sacrificial ground floors that water simply passes through on new structures, and implement a deadline for existing structures.
Pretty irresponsible to allow building in areas that get residences & infrastructure damaged & rebuilt/repaired every big/bad storm.
Time to stop thinking small, and realize if you don't want more damage like from sandy, you need to build things to protect those areas. And 12 billion dollars once for a storm that could cause 4x that in damage is absolutely worth the monetary investment, let alone the psychological impact of saving families from living in red cross shelters & losing all their stuff etc.....
From now on there are no easy choices, but they will have to be made, or sandy (or worse) could happen again, even as soon as this summer...
Next stop the square, journal square station next!