By DONALD WITTKOWSKI
The federal agency that oversees beach replenishment projects at the Jersey Shore is planning to keep an eye on an area of severe dune erosion in Sea Isle City to try to figure out why it is occurring.
Known as “project monitoring,” the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers conducts surveys of the oceanside beaches in Sea Isle in late summer or early fall each year to see if they are eroding, growing or staying the same.
Now, the agency will expand the monitoring program to include the dramatic erosion to the dunes and beaches happening on the bayside of the Townsends Inlet Bridge in the southern tip of Sea Isle, which sits on Ludlam Island.
“As for Townsends Inlet, our previous survey regime ended on the oceanside of the Townsends Inlet Bridge. With the erosion at the southern end of Ludlam Island, we have added two additional survey lines to wrap around the inlet beach frontage to collect data on the bayside of the Townsends Inlet Bridge where the erosion is,” Army Corps spokesman Steve Rochette said in an email Thursday.
He explained that the agency conducts surveys of specific areas of its beach replenishment projects and compares the data to previous years “to better understand trends.”
So far, it remains a mystery why the dunes on the bayside of the Townsends Inlet Bridge have been collapsing in an avalanche of sand, trees and rocks in the past few months.
“That’s what we don’t know,” Sea Isle City Business Administrator George Savastano said in an interview.
Townsends Inlet, a swift-running channel that separates Sea Isle and Avalon, is a superhighway of sorts linking the ocean and the bay. The powerful currents are known to cause changes to the surrounding shoreline almost every year.
But this year has been even worse. In April, the beach next to the bayside of the bridge was stripped of its top layer of powdery sand. Meanwhile, the beach on the oceanside of the bridge was radically reshaped with the creation of a massive sandbar jutting far out into the inlet.
All of those changes have been followed by severe erosion of the sand dunes next to Townsends Inlet Waterfront Park. The mountainous dunes have been sheared off to create cliff-like drop-offs that appear to be 20 or 30 feet high in some places.
The waterfront park, despite being just steps from the busy summer beaches, is a tranquil hideaway classified as a maritime forest. It is considered one of Sea Isle’s most significant natural assets.
Yet mature trees and bushes that live on top of the dunes overlooking the inlet have been taking a beating from the erosion. As the dunes have collapsed, some of the trees have toppled over onto the beach below.
The city has posted warning signs and a fence to temporarily close the beach on the bayside of the bridge. Despite those efforts by the city, beachgoers and anglers routinely ignore the signs.
Earlier this week, Teresa Lavalle, who has a summer home in Sea Isle, was fishing on the closed portion of the beach along with her nephews, Anthony and Dominic Costello.
“It’s beautiful here,” Lavalle said of the Townsends Inlet beach. “We love it. We hope that they replenish it.”
Sea Isle officials are considering both short-term and longer-range plans to repair the damaged dunes and beach.
Savastano mentioned the possibility that Sea Isle could do some “sand harvesting” in the short term to restore the dunes. In that scenario, sand would be taken from other beaches where it is plentiful and used to restore the depleted dunes in Townsends Inlet.
The city, however, would wait until after the busy summer tourism season to do the sand harvesting work, as well as clean up the fallen trees and other debris, Savastano said.
Longer-term plans seem to be more complicated. Savastano explained that the Army Corps of Engineers is considering the possibility of adding the bayside of Townsends Inlet to the next beach replenishment project in Sea Isle. But that project would need a separate environmental permit and probably would not happen for “a couple of years,” he said.
In his email, Rochette said the Army Corps would like to keep Sea Isle on a three-year cycle for beach replenishment if the federal and non-federal funding is available for such an undertaking. Under that scenario, Sea Isle’s next beach replenishment project would likely be done in fall 2022 or winter 2022-2023, he said.
The city’s most recent beach replenishment work was completed in 2020 and included more than 750,000 cubic yards of fresh sand to restore the shoreline between 28th and 52nd streets in the center of town and from 74th Street to 93rd Street on the oceanside of Townsends Inlet.
However, the bayside of Townsends Inlet was not included on the beach replenishment work because it fell outside the boundaries of the project. Rochette indicated that the bayside would not be part of future beach restoration projects in Sea Isle supervised by the Army Corps.
“Our understanding is that the erosion is on the bayside of Townsends Inlet Bridge. This area is outside of the authorized Federal project limits, which ends at the terminal groin south of 93rd Street and therefore would not be included in future nourishments,” he said.
Rochette, though, noted that the Army Corps will monitor the erosion in Townsends Inlet and provide Sea Isle with technical assistance.
In the meantime, residents of the Townsends Shoal condominium complex off 94th Street are anxiously awaiting repairs to the beach and dunes overlooking the bay.
Joe Civitillo, one of the condo owners at Townsends Shoal, appeared during a City Council meeting in June to urge Sea Isle officials to do something to halt the erosion and clean up the trees, rocks and other debris that have come tumbling down the dunes onto the beach near the bridge.
Civitillo, who serves as the vice president of the condo association, indicated that he wants full-fledged repairs made to the dunes as soon as possible – not two or three years from now.
“Waiting a couple of years isn’t going to cut it,” he said in an email Wednesday.
He expressed hope that Sea Isle will at least do the sand harvesting in the fall as a “mini-fix.”
