Well, 12 years after Superstorm Sandy devastated shore towns up and down the state, the final phase of a resiliency project in Port Monmouth is finally underway.

Congressman Frank Pallone and officials from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers today launched the last step of a $61 million plan.

It'll build flood walls along route 36 drainage systems, levees and road closure gates.

The project is part of a larger effort to safeguard neighborhoods from rising sea levels and storm surge.

But as senior correspondent Brenda Flanagan reports, those efforts rely heavily on federal investments and an incoming administration that's denied.

There's a climate crisis.

Big cranes lowered pieces of yet another flood wall in the Port Monmouth section of Middletown, where officials today announced they'd signed the final contract on a sprawling $300 million defensive network.

Levees, gates, walls and dunes to channel, deflect and drain dangerous storm surges.

Thousands and thousands of Middletown residents will be safe secured from those, rising tidal waves.

Port Monmouth continues to be a community that is vulnerable to future storm events, and this project, once complete, will help to reduce that risk significantly.

Oh, I am so grateful for this to go up.

What they've been doing has really helped us a lot.

Kathy Rogers moved here in 1976 and immediately lost everything in a flood.

Homes in Port Monmouth built on salt and freshwater marshes, flooded often.

And then, of course, Sandy came and we had 241 homes here that were lost when we started thinking about this and how it was necessary after Sandy.

In my opinion, it becomes more necessary now because of the problems that we face, with, with climate.

Building this type of infrastructure to protect our communities is critical, now, today, and will only become more so in the years ahead.

It's an expensive 15 year long effort.

Funding dedicated through the Sandy Relief Act.

But the enhanced beach already needs replenishment.

And some advocates political storms ahead, recalling how the first Trump administration slashed funding for shore resilience.

And the current president elect remains skeptical of climate change.

It's one of the great scams of all time.

You know why they don't talk about it?

Because people aren't buying it anymore.

And so that's a problem.

I'm not going to tell you differently.

Congressman Frank Pallone says he's trying to add earmarks for beach replenishment to the pending U.S. budget document.

But he believes federal funding for coastal Jersey could survive under Trump.

In the past, he's been supportive of the Army Corps projects.

And so I don't really think that we need to worry about that when it comes to this project or the other Army Corps projects, you know, like in Union Beach or the or the shore protection along the Atlantic coast, if and when that were to come?

There are certain be a bipartisan voice to advocate for the completion of this project.

But if the next administration does cut climate resilience funding, would environmental officials then reexamine their priorities?

Would they still greenlight a pricey project for a small community like this one?

Hard discussions and tough budgets lie ahead.

Jersey's DEP commissioner says it's how you do that mix of, solution building, right?

You have to acknowledge that some places are vulnerable and that others will benefit from the hard civil engineering that we see just, over our shoulders here.

Without this complex system, Port Monmouth would literally go under and we needed this to save the bayshore.

The bayshore is the life of this town.

The last phase of this resiliency project won't be completed until 2028, but climate change doesn't follow.

Either a construction or a political calendar.

In Port Monmouth, I'm Brenda Flanagan, NJ Spotlight News.