By DONALD WITTKOWSKI
Sea Isle City’s beaches still must be assessed to determine the full extent of damage caused by a coastal storm that lashed the island with a series of destructive high tides and gobbled up huge amounts of sand.
Coming at just the right time, Sea Isle, Ocean City and Strathmere are part of a $32.5 million beach replenishment project that will deposit a total of 2.4 million cubic yards of fresh sand along the eroded shoreline of all three towns starting this fall.
The project was announced by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers before a lingering storm, parked 200 miles offshore, pounded the Cape May County beaches with strong winds and unusually high tides between Oct. 9 and Oct.12.
A spokesman for the Army Corps of Engineers said Monday that even more sand may be added to the replenishment project once an analysis is done of the beaches and dunes in all three towns.
Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Company, of Oak Brook, Ill., the contractor for the replenishment project, will conduct “pre-placement surveys” of the beaches prior to beginning the work to determine if the Army Corps of Engineers should consider the option for more sand.
“We analyze that data that comes back from that (survey) and if it calls for additional sand, which certainly wouldn’t be surprising in this case, that’s where the options for the contract come in,” said Ed Voigt, a spokesman for the Army Corps of Engineers.
Options built into the contract could increase the cost of the beach replenishment project to $41.3 million, depending on the findings by Great Lakes. The hope is that there will be enough funding to pay for all of the sand that is needed to restore the beaches in all three towns.
“If the funds are more than enough to cover the additional sand that is needed, then we pump all of the sand,” Voigt said. “If we can only do some of it, then we’ll use the options to assess what’s available and do the best we can.”
Dunes are sliced away, leaving cliff-like walls more than 10 feet high in some places.
Until the surveys are completed, it is impossible for the Army Corps of Engineers to say unequivocally whether the amount of sand will be increased, Voigt explained.
“We can’t predict right now,” he said. “The options will certainly help. That’s all I can say. We won’t know until we get those pre-placement surveys and then go from there.”
A wooden dune fence is ripped to shreds.
A walk along the beaches on Oct. 12 revealed huge chunks of sand sliced away from the dunes, leaving cliff-like walls in some spots. Some beaches appeared bare – stripped of their powdery top layer of sand.
Wooden dune fencing was torn to shreds. At 40th Street, the wooden railing for a walkway to the beach was perched on wobbly legs because the sand underneath had been washed away. Even before this storm, beaches and dunes in Townsends Inlet between 88th and 92nd streets had suffered significant erosion. The sand dunes, in particular, have been sheared away by the churning surf, creating jagged cliffs more than 10 feet high. Yellow caution tape and other barriers have been erected to prevent people from venturing out on beach pathways that have steep drop-offs. Stacey Oropeza, who lives in Springfield, Pa., and was visiting Sea Isle for the weekend on Oct. 12, peered out at the ocean from behind a wooden barrier that blocked access to the storm-damaged beach at 40th Street. Her sons, Ryan and Roman, stood with her behind the barrier. “This is so sad. We come down here every week, but I’ve never seen it like this,” Oropeza said of the severely eroded beaches.
Stacey Oropeza and her sons, Ryan and Roman, peer out from behind a barrier that blocks the pathway to the storm-damaged beach at 40th Street.
