Y2K - A non-event

America spent much of 1995-1999 worried about the changing of the millennium. Y2K, for short, the worry was that every computer system in the world was vulnerable to being shut down. Since computers had been around for only 50 years and engineers might not have had the foresight to think their code would still be in place in the year 2000, their calendars would reset to 1900, or worse, stop working altogether, with unintended consequences.

Planes might fall out of the sky, banks might lose track of their deposits. Much of the hype was fueled by the media. IT Consultants made a fortune ensuring all systems were checked. Other than some small business disruptions, there was very little fallout when January 1 came around after everyone “partied like it was 1999” and the 1900s gave way to the 2000s.

The issues to deal with in Sea Girt were simple. One of the blessings of living in a small town, is that most problems are small.

Neighbors complained that the sound from the fire siren was too loud. About 50 homeowners signed a petition. They wanted another method of notification for the volunteers. The fire horn had been the same volume since its installation 50 years earlier, and the fire company twice voted unanimously to keep it as a primary means of notification, despite all the firefighters having pagers. The siren also alerted other members of the community to the emergency. Council had the siren checked to ensure it was not a health concern, and it’s still going off today.

The next small matter was the Senior citizens’ beach badges. For the first time, the borough offered a $10 discount to season badge buyers over 65 who would get a different colored badge. It was met with an immediate protest by Brian Buckely, who pointed out this was a potential privacy issue, and wrote a letter with the many reasons the badges were not permitted under current law to Councilman Dr. Peter Halas. “No good deed goes unpunished,” he noted, and the badges lost their special color.

A more serious issue was the dredging spoils of the Brooklyn Navy Yard, which were being dumped in the Mud Hole six miles offshore, and in direct flow of Nor’easter storms to the Monmouth Shore. George Woerner, an environmental educator and Sea Girt resident, encouraged the Council to join the protest against the dumping. VP Al Gore had led the charge to ban the practice, and Congress had stopped commercial dumpers from using the ocean in 1997, but the Army Corps permitted the Navy to use the mud dump. Sea Girt joined other coastal communities in a lawsuit.

The controversy generated a discussion about what constitutes clean dredge spoils and how to properly handle silting in waterways. In 2001, the spoils found a new home away from the ocean. They were used to cap old coal mines in Pennsylvania.

The clean ocean water we enjoy now has been improving for 50 years. There has been a tremendous recovery in marine life from the Hudson River south into Monmouth County. The city and surrounding communities have spent billions to stop sanitary sewers from overflowing into the ocean. The biggest remaining problems are the washout of trash from storm sewers into streams and rivers and the buildup of natural bacteria in restricted flow waters like Wreck Pond.

The long Wreck Pond Outflow pipe helped push pond water further out to sea

These problems were the focus of the new decade. The replenishment of the beaches left the drain pipes blocked or too close to bathers. Plans were made to extend the outfall pipe on the Spring Lake border to 600 feet offshore, to better dilute pond water, and new practices were implemented in storm sewer and catchbasin cleaning. The abundance of nuisance, non-migratory Canada Geese contributed to the problem in local ponds. Lawns, manicured sports fields, suburban developments, and retention basins for erosion control led to a population explosion, and “geese police” were hired to chase the animals with trained dogs.