Beached, docked & dumped – nj.com

The wind rustles the tarp draped over the battered bow of the long-forgotten boat. An anchor aimlessly drifts up against craggy rocks. Another boat sits caked in mud, its windows dusty. The decaying helm empty, almost ghostly.

Capt. Bill Sheehan watches from the banks of the quiet inlet.

While leading tours of the historic natural habitats along this 45-mile stretch of the Hackensack River in the summer, he will inevitably run into the same question.

What are those abandoned boats doing there?

“There’s probably 100 reasons why they’re left there,” says Sheehan, founder of the Hackensack Riverkeeper. “Most of them being people don’t have the money or energy to care for them anymore.”

In New Jersey’s roughly 130 miles of coastline and hundreds of inland bays, creeks, coves and rivers there are an untold number of similarly abandoned boats.

Sailboats beached in the sand. Yachts left to bob in the bay. Forgotten fishing vessels moored to decaying piers.

Costly repairs. Expensive marina fees. Storm-related accidents.

The reasons are countless.

They sit, sometimes for decades, left to rot and rust in the water becoming not only eyesores but environmental hazards and navigational dangers — what one mayor described as “a blight on our community, a drain on city resources and a detriment to marine wildlife.”

Holding their owners accountable and hauling away the vessels isn’t as easy as slapping a parking ticket on the windshield and calling a towboat.

Despite legislation that was passed more than a decade ago imposing a $1,000 daily fine on anyone who abandons a boat and giving towns the power to claim the title and bill the owner for the removal, it can be difficult to enforce, Sheehan and other New Jersey environmental advocates told NJ Advance Media.

Removing an abandoned boat is a costly and environmentally risky process for towns and for which little funding exists — leaving local governments little recourse to recoup funds and taxpayers to foot the bill.

New Jersey — unlike other states such as Florida and South Carolina that have a more comprehensive approach to the problem — doesn’t know how widespread the issue is and lacks a central authority to track abandoned boats, enforce the law or advocate for sorely-needed funding.

“There’s still a fair number of small boats and other debris related to Sandy out there and that was a long time ago,” said Paul Bologna, a biology professor and the director of the Marine Biology and Coastal Sciences Program at Montclair State University. “There are also larger vessels, and those can take years to get permitting, to secure funding and actually get them removed, and in many cases, it’s not done immediately.”

“It’s an incredibly complex problem that there’s not an easy fix for,” he added.

A case study on the bay

In the water of the quiet Barnegat Bay cove, a buoy danced lazily with a warning etched onto its side. “Danger.”

It was one of five the New Jersey State Police placed around the abandoned motor yacht when it showed up in the inlet outside John C. Bartlett Park in Berkeley Township last summer. The others have since floated away.

Chilly winds lashing at his face, Gregory Elliot, chief of the Berkeley Township Underwater Search and Rescue Squad 86, ferried a reporter and photographer from NJ Advance Media out to the derelict boat on a cold February afternoon. His crew is often called on to volunteer for rescues or — like on this visit — to survey an abandoned vessel.

“There’s all sorts of stuff growing in there, mold and whatnot,” said Elliot, steering around the yacht, adjusting his sunglasses. “I would say this boat has been here since at least the end of the summer.”

The yacht sits a stone’s throw from the 25-acre park, a popular crabbing spot where boats and jet skiers park on the weekends.

Just how the boat ended up there, who left it so suddenly — along with the pink and aqua toddler bikes on its deck — remained a mystery to most onlookers.

But the police know at least part of the story.

The owner was identified and charged with abandonment, pollution of tidal waters, and failure to number — penalties made possible under the Abandoned Vessel Disposition Law passed in 2011.

But it’s unclear whether the owner has paid up or is cooperating. State Police said he “remains at large.”

John Camera, Berkeley Township administrator, said the State Police told them the boat was in the state’s jurisdiction and it “has done all it could do” as it works to track down the owner. In the meantime, the state asked the township if it could handle the removal.

“Long story short, we don’t have the kind of equipment needed or the money to be able to contract somebody,” Camera said. “Quite frankly, it’s a really expensive proposition and sensitive thing to do because we don’t know if there’s oil, gas or something else that may leak out when we try to take the boat out.”

Elliot said the boat has two fuel tanks, which he has not fully inspected yet and he worries could be prime for a spill.

“I could come and start drilling holes to look into it but the best thing to do before anything happens is to get it out of the bay,” said Elliot. “The other thing is security. Any random person can come up and set fire to this, steal stuff, or do other illicit things like cut the rope and send it away.”

Elliot said a concerted effort should be made to address boats that are abandoned — what he calls “indigent salvage” as some people fall on hard times and simply can’t afford to maintain them. Boats, after all, don’t come cheap, he said.

The Ocean County town isn’t the only one with this problem.

It’s happened so often in Cape May that Gretchen Whitman could dedicate a photo album to it. Whitman, the director of the Nature Center of Cape May, shared half a dozen photos with NJ Advance Media from incidents over the years.

One boat had a “Shannon Maríe” decal on its transom, the white turning into a shoddy brown. Another vessel appeared charred after having caught fire, its red mast broken and sticking limply into the sand.

And it happened again in January when a white sailboat with a Maryland identification number on it appeared near the nature center — in an area where children often play — and its owner still hadn’t returned.

“We have to bug our township and it just feels sometimes like it’s not their priority,” Whitman said. “But it’s really a problem because they become not only pollutants but safety hazards and eyesores.”

Who to call?

Whose problem is it? That depends on where the boat ends up.

“Some vessels are located in hard-to-reach areas, requiring large, specialized equipment for recovery and transportation,” said Katie Morgan, mid-Atlantic regional coordinator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “Others may sit unaddressed because of lack of funding, difficulty locating owners, jurisdictional ambiguities, and lack of coordination.”

Abandoned vessels should be reported to New Jersey State Police’s Marine Services Bureau, said Sgt. Alejandro Goez — but that doesn’t always happen.

Based on interviews with NJ Advance Media, residents and organizers have instead reported abandoned boats by dialing the local police, emailing a council member or other city official, as well as reaching out to nearby non-profit organizations.

The New Jersey State Police unit often gets involved when a boat poses an environmental risk or threatens navigation. State Police might have to call the U.S. Coast Guard or Department of Environmental Protection for additional help, or turn the case over to them entirely.

If no one comes to claim the boat within 30 days, it can be impounded. Then, a town or new potential owner can petition the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission to take over the title and bill the owners for removal.

Only about 30 to 40 applications for abandoned boat titles are filed each year, said MVC spokesman William Connolly.

Even if an owner can be tracked, they may have filed for bankruptcy and can’t afford to pay for the removal, local officials said. Other times, registration and identification numbers on boats are missing — either removed purposefully or illegible due to rust.

With no dedicated funding, towns are left to use money from their budgets and try to sell the abandoned boat to recoup the funds.

Sea Bright had no choice but to pay to remove a sailboat that was abandoned in the surf in 2019, right at the peak of summer.

“That boat washed up and was there a few weeks before the borough had to take on both the cost and the responsibility,” said Sea Bright Lt. James McCue. “It did cause a burden at the end of the day to taxpayers because we had to take care of it ourselves.”

McCue did not know the total cost of removing the boat or if the borough attempted to recoup the funds from either the owner or by selling the boat.

”It’s a rare occurrence but it does happen, and in the case of that incident it ultimately fell on the borough,” McCue said.

Rep. Jeff Van Drew, who sponsored the abandoned vessels legislation as a state Senator from South Jersey over a decade ago, said one solution might be for an agency within the state police to be in charge of the issue “so the municipality isn’t stuck with the cost or even the concern of a cost.”

Gov. Phil Murphy’s office did not return multiple requests for comment about the issue.

Just how many

Capt. Sheehan can venture a guess as to how many boats have been left to languish on the Hackensack River.

At least 16, by his estimate — and that’s not counting the ones that have slipped below the river’s surface and been forgotten.

There are at least another 14 in Weehawken Cove, some with masts poking out of the water. But how many throughout New Jersey is anyone’s guess.

Abandoned boats in the United States are not tracked in a centralized place, said Morgan, of NOAA.

In 30 coastal states with over 12,000 miles of ocean coastline, only a handful have taken a comprehensive approach to the problem with dedicated funding and state programs that reimburse local towns when they discard abandoned vessels.

New Jersey is not one of them.

Florida state officials can tell you exactly how many abandoned vessels it has — more than 550 in 2021 — and where they are on its 1,350 miles of coast and other waterways through its derelict vessel database. With that knowledge, lawmakers there said they would dedicate nearly $20 million to address the issue.

“Tracking the number of derelict and abandoned vessels in Florida is important in our effort to address the issue,” said Shannon Knowles, a spokeswoman for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. “(When) a derelict vessel is not removed or brought into compliance by the owner, after due process, the FWC works with county or city partners to remove it …and assists local governments with reimbursement grants in many cases.”

The term “derelict” is typically used to describe vessels with an identifiable owner, while those without known owners are usually classified as “abandoned.”

Tracking abandoned boats is not required by federal law, so states that see a benefit in doing so are left to invest in creating publicly-viewable maps on their own. A New Jersey State Police spokesman said the agency has not considered the utility of launching that kind of database.

But Montclair professor Bologna sees the upshot of such a proposal.

“It would be very beneficial to tag these abandoned boats for the people that use that water for commercial or recreational purposes … It lets people know there’s a navigational hazard there,” said Bologna.

It’d also help with prioritizing problem areas that pose a risk to the nearby plant and marine life.

“(Abandoned boats can have) fuel, oil, and other materials that are relatively toxic, that can leach out into the environment over a period of time … and those can be detrimental to the organisms that are nearby, as well as the water,” said Bologna.

Those on the water – like Capt. Sheehan and members of the Berkeley Township Underwater Search and Rescue — agree.

Sheehan said a database would also mean fewer people abandoning boats. Dumping begets further dumping, he said.

Carl Mattocks, president of non-profit Berkeley Township Underwater Search and Rescue, sent a wish-list of ideas to NOAA last year including the concept of a reporting tool where users could submit geo-tagged photos to log the locations of at-risk vessels. South Carolina even has an app for that.

But it’s only half a solution. He said any statewide effort to tag and map out abandoned boats should be done in conjunction with funding.

“If you were to make the register of abandoned boats and you can’t do anything with that information, that’s not only frustrating, it’s almost criminal,” Mattocks said.

A matter of money

Masts jut out of the water in the Hudson River. Skyscrapers from the New York City skyline dot the background. Joggers trot along the nearly 19-mile waterfront.

The listless remnants of more than a dozen boats have found their resting place in Weehawken Cove for the past decade since Superstorm Sandy brought about their demise.

Most went unclaimed, said Marilyn Baer, a city spokeswoman. But come spring, they’ll be yanked like weeds from a garden.

Hoboken officials obtained a $235,000 grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration which will be put toward the more than $500,000 price tag of the long-awaited removal of the unsightly boats. The work starts this May.

The city, with help from the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection and other organizations, is covering the remainder of the costs.

In a statement, Hoboken Mayor Ravi Bhalla said he looked forward to restoring the cove — calling the abandoned boats “a blight on our community, a drain on city resources and a detriment to marine wildlife.”

While municipalities and states can take advantage of grant funding for debris removal, NOAA can’t keep up with the requests. A total of $15 million in requests were received between October 2020 and September 2021 but only $1.8 million was given out. New Jersey received $235,000 for a project to remove the boats from Weehawken Cove, but the total requests made that year were nearly double that amount.

Since 2009, the NOAA Marine Debris Program has awarded 12 grants for New Jersey projects, totaling more than $1.5 million, a spokesman said.

“The removal costs of a vessel vary significantly depending on the type of vessel, size, location, natural resources at risk, salvaging logistics … and available disposal options,” said Morgan, of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Other states have created programs to circumvent some of that cost.

In Maryland, new boat owners pay a 5% excise tax, money that can be later applied to abandoned boat and debris removals. Washington — which reimburses local towns up to 90% of removal costs — set up a “vessel turn-in program” which allows boat owners who can no longer care for their vessels to responsibly dispose of them before they become derelict. Oregon puts $150,000 aside every two years to reimburse local marinas and towns for abandoned boat removals.

Advocates from other states and New Jersey noted it’s cheaper to provide funds so removals can be carried out quicker. When the problem lingers, the cost can go up.

Until then, the work falls largely on volunteers like the Berkeley Township Underwater Search and Rescue. Elliot, the squad chief, said his organization is currently looking into not only removing abandoned boats from waterways but finding a way to recycle reusable parts from those vessels.

“It’s just,” Elliot said, pausing, “…money. We can’t go everywhere and keep fixing stuff and doing all that for nothing.”

‘We love the harbor’

Mark Allen is part of the reason any law on abandoned boats exists at all. He and his wife, Whitman — the director of the Nature Center — petitioned Van Drew and other legislators in 2008 for something to be done.

He recalled a particular incident where a man pulled up in a run-down sailboat on the Cape May harbor.

“And he came in, and he folded up his sails and he loaded up his cart. I said to him, ‘What are you going to do with your boat?’ And he goes, ‘I’m just gonna leave it (here) ‘til next year.’

“…That’s what people do,” Allen added.

A former senator representing Cape May, Cumberland and Atlantic counties, Van Drew said the law did make it easier for towns with funds to remove abandoned boats. But the issue is not that simple, he noted.

Because town budgets are tight, local officials may have trouble addressing boats right away, he said.

“I don’t think attention toward the issue has waned, I just think it’s a very specific (problem),” Van Drew said. “People continue to be concerned about it … and there have been some discussions about having a single (centralized) agency or a group or a commission that would be responsible for this.”

But nothing has been established.

Whitman said without funds or a true scope of the problem, she doesn’t see anything changing.

“We love the harbor, and we care about the harbor and we’re so sick and tired of this problem,” Whitman said.

“Yes, there are regulations,” Whitman said. “(But) I don’t see a whole lot of action happening.”

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Steven Rodas may be reached at [email protected]. Follow him @stevenrodasnj.