JON HURDLE / NJ SPOTLIGHT – At the corner of Weber Avenue and Loniewski Street in Sayreville, empty brown lots sit between a quiet former residential street and a line of phragmites-choked wetland bordering the South River about a quarter-mile away.

The lots are the former sites of about 50 single-family homes that were flooded up to their second floors by Superstorm Sandy in 2012, and later purchased and demolished by Blue Acres, New Jersey’s state-run buyout program for willing sellers of flood-prone properties …