LONG BEACH TOWNSHIP, N.J. – New Jerseyans have to put up with taxes, tolls, toxic waste and, occasionally, Snooki. So an occasional trip to the beach can be all that keeps some folks here sane.

Now officials in the nation’s most densely populated state are rewriting public beach access rules that could make it easier for well-to-do towns to keep out-of-towners off their beaches — and a citizen-rights sandstorm is brewing.

The state says it has to give more local control over access after a court decision struck down more stringent rules that spelled out uniform standards for each shore town. State officials say they can accomplish more by working with towns and giving them flexibility rather than dictating a “one-size-fits-all” access policy to them.

But beachgoers fear the new rules, if adopted, would reward the very people who have made it so hard for outsiders to reach the beaches for decades.

Joe Woerner, an official with the Jersey Shore Surfrider Foundation, said he was handcuffed as a teenager 20 years ago as he came out of the ocean with his surfboard. He was taken to a police holding cell in Sea Girt for crossing a hundred yards or so of sand without a beach badge.

“I was a 15-year-old boy arrested for using the ocean,” he said. “These are the kind of people who will be making our rules.”

Most New Jersey beach towns require surfers to buy and wear beach badges costing anywhere from $5 to $12 a day, regardless of how long they are on the sand or in the water. Woerner’s charges were eventually dropped, but not before “a bunch of people who own places on the beach gave me grief about being on the beach without a badge and how surfers were what’s wrong with our town.”

Oceanfront homeowners like Dorothy Jedziniak of Ship Bottom feel there’s already more than enough access to beaches in her corner of Long Beach Island.

“We are being attacked with tourism, business and inundation,” she said at a public hearing on the plan, appealing that state officials stand firm and implement the new rules, which she feels would lessen the influx of visitors.

“We have a beautiful island,” she said. “I ask you, please: hang onto it.”

A Quinnipiac University poll released last week found 48 percent of New Jerseyans feel shore towns make it too hard for the public to use beaches, while 43 percent said the current level of access is OK. They also overwhelmingly said they want the state to mandate bathrooms near the beach — something the new rules don’t require.

Beach access advocates note that almost all of New Jersey’s progress over the last 50 years in ensuring outsiders’ beach rights has come through costly, drawn-out litigation — often driven by the state itself. That’s why many are so upset that the state is relinquishing the stick in favor of the carrot.

Tourism is a $35.5 billion industry in New Jersey; 67.8 million people visited the state last year, many of them flocking to its beaches. Most shore towns realize they’re dependent on tourism to keep restaurants, grocery and liquor stores, gas stations and other businesses afloat, and to hold down permanent residents’ property taxes. Shore tourism and higher sales tax receipts also benefit the state.

In theory, residents are guaranteed access to bays, rivers and shores, under a longstanding legal doctrine.

Some shore towns, however, are reluctant to share their wealth of sand, and sea. Disagreements over who can and should use the beach sometimes take on elements of class warfare.

Mantoloking, about 50 miles north of Atlantic City, is one of the wealthiest towns in New Jersey — a quarter of its 423 permanent residents list their occupation as “corporate executive” and more than 50 homes there are worth $2 million or more.

The town was about to spend $900,000 in 2007 to buy property for beachgoers’ parking and a public bathroom but residents persuaded the borough council to back down.

Some shore towns use tactics like eliminating or severely restricting parking, not providing rest rooms, and banning food and drink from the beach. That places some beaches off-limits to anyone but locals who can walk to the beach, then back home to eat or answer nature’s call. For decades, Bay Head’s beaches were legally off-limits to anyone but residents, until a court forced them to admit anyone who buys a badge.

In Mantoloking, beachgoers can only park their cars on public streets for two hours. In parts of Long Beach Island like the Loveladies and North Beach sections of Long Beach Township, many pathways to the shoreline are lined with signs warning, “Private drive. No public beach access.”

Bob Martin, New Jersey’s environmental protection commissioner, says the state had to change the rules because an appeals court in 2008 struck down rules requiring public access points every quarter-mile along the shore, parking and bathrooms. The south Jersey beach town of Avalon sued, saying the state overstepped its bounds by requiring too much public access, and unreasonable requirements like 24-hour access to beaches and marinas.

Martin said the administration of Gov. Chris Christie “believes that public access is a fundamental right for the people of New Jersey. What we’re trying to do with these regulations is enhance public access. In the state of New Jersey, 95 to 98 percent of our 127 miles of oceanfront is accessible to the public. We’ve counted over 1,000 access points to the shore. We seem to focus on two or three towns we have problems with. We need to look at the big picture.”

Martin said he plans to “tweak” the proposed rules to more clearly spell out after-hours access rights for two of the groups who complained the loudest: surfers and anglers.

“If you’re talking about keeping the teenage parties off the beach at 3 a.m., that’s one thing,” he said. “Keeping fishermen off the beach just before dawn is quite another.”

Nevertheless, beachgoers will be watching closely. James Hill, a suburban Philadelphia resident, who spends much of his free time fishing at the Jersey shore, summed up his feelings:

“These beaches rejuvenate and bring life to the people who love them,” he said. “To lose access to that would be devastating.”