Rows and rows of newly planted dune grass are next to the beach pathway on 85th Street.
Sea Isle City has a bumper crop of dune grass.
Stalks of the freshly planted brownish vegetation are poking several inches high out of the sand – neatly arranged, row after row, like a farmer’s field.
To fortify the dunes, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has planted dune grass as the last part of a beach replenishment project in 2024 that restored Sea Isle’s storm-eroded shoreline with more than 900,000 cubic yards of fresh sand.
However, one Sea Isle resident is concerned that the immature vegetation may be damaged by people carelessly walking on the dunes or even sliding down the sandy hills on their boogie boards.
“I’ve never seen so many grasses planted. It looks fabulous,” Sue Williamson said during the Jan. 14 City Council meeting. “I don’t want all those grasses to go to waste.”
Williamson is urging the city to place fences on the beaches in front of the dunes to protect the grass.
Sea Isle officials said that the Public Works Department is assessing the situation in response to Williamson’s request.
“We take dune protection very seriously. We appreciate the dunes. The vegetation on the dunes is very important and protects our shoreline,” city spokeswoman Katherine Custer said in an interview Wednesday.
Williamson is a member of Sea Isle’s Environmental Commission and serves as director of the family-friendly summer beachcombing tours that combine fun with education while teaching children about the shore’s fragile ecosystem.
In an interview after the Jan. 14 Council meeting, Williamson said she is encouraged that the city will consider placing new fencing to protect the freshly planted dune grass.
“I’m satisfied that they’re looking into it. I’ll be more satisfied when I see a fence,” she said.
Beachcombing director Sue Williamson, at right, is joined by Kathy Callahan during one of Sea Isle's summer tours in 2023.Custer praised Williamson and other environmentally conscious residents for caring about the beaches and dunes.
“We always appreciate people who show concern about our environment,” Custer said.
The dunes form a natural barrier to protect Sea Isle against coastal storms, acting as a massive wall to block the raging surf from damaging or destroying homes and businesses.
Previously, sections of Sea Isle’s beaches and dunes had been severely eroded by coastal storms. The waves literally washed away huge amounts of sand. In some cases, the beaches were stripped of the top layer of powdery sand and the dunes were sheared away to create steep, cliff-like edges.
Last year, a total of 932,000 cubic yards of new sand was added to the shoreline from 73rd Street to 94th Street in the south end of the island and from 29th Street to 53rd Street in the central part of town.
It was not immediately clear whether new dune grass has been planted in all of the areas where the beach replenishment was done. Custer, though, noted that the dunes stretch along Sea Isle’s entire beachfront.
“We’re talking about miles and miles of dunes, so there’s a cost to all of this,” she said of the possibility of the city installing even protective fencing.
A walk along the beaches reveals that large stretches of the dunes, particularly in the south end of the island, already have some fences built around them or on top of them for protection.
Williamson believes that more fences should be added on the beaches in front of the dunes to prevent people from trampling the newly planted grass.
Grass and other vegetation are planted on the restored dunes to help build them up through their natural cycle, allowing them to become stronger as they mature.
The young dunes will link up with more mature dunes nearby that are covered with thick vegetation to form a sandy barrier protecting Sea Isle from one end of the island to the other.
Stalks of newly planted dune grass poke out of the sand in the south end of Sea Isle.
