By DONALD WITTKOWSKI
There was a vacuum cleaner box – minus the vacuum cleaner.
A large black trash bag was stuffed so full that it looked like it was ready to burst.
Sheets of discarded plastic flapped in the wind while trapped in the guardrail lining the road.
All of this litter and more had accumulated along Sea Isle Boulevard over the winter, but Cape May County work crews cleaned it up Tuesday to give the main entryway into Sea Isle City its normally inviting appearance just in time for spring’s arrival.
“Sea Isle Boulevard is the main entrance to our community and we want to make sure it is kept clean. We will continue to maintain the road so it is kept beautiful,” Mayor Leonard Desiderio said while thanking the county for the cleanup work.
Sea Isle Boulevard is a county road. In the past, inmates from the county jail would pick up litter once or twice a month to maintain the roadway. But the county stopped letting inmates out of the jail for roadside cleanup duty during the coronavirus pandemic.
However, County Engineer Bob Church explained that inmates will be back on roadway cleanup duty again, supplemented by county workers.
In addition to Sea Isle Boulevard, the county will be removing litter from Avalon Boulevard and the Roosevelt Boulevard corridor connecting Marmora with Ocean City.
When the inmates could not clean up Sea Isle Boulevard during the pandemic in 2020, the Boy Scouts from Troop 76 in Sea Isle volunteered to remove the trash. Desiderio accepted the Boy Scouts’ offer in November 2020 and treated them to sandwiches afterward.
The Boy Scouts were accompanied by a trash truck while they methodically picked up the assorted litter and debris. A Cape May County Sheriff’s Office patrol car, with its lights flashing, closely trailed behind them on the shoulder of the road to protect them from traffic.
One of the Boys Scouts found an old, weather-beaten $5 bill mixed in with the trash he picked up.
Nearly two miles long, Sea Isle Boulevard offers panoramic views of the surrounding bays and marshlands. But the vista can be spoiled by unsightly litter accumulating along the road.
Church believes he knows the primary source of the trash. He noted that the county is planning to take steps to cut down on the litter.
“My understanding is that a significant amount of the trash blows out of container trucks, some covered and some uncovered,” Church said in an email. “Our public works director is working with other officials to attain better compliance for the un-tarped trucks since it has been an issue countywide of late. This results in a lot of labor man hours spent picking up trash, as the trash is unsightly and it has to be removed before any mowing can begin.”
In 2020, Desiderio said he suspected that much of the litter had been blowing out of the back of trash trucks or construction vehicles heading out of Sea Isle en route to the county landfill.
Desiderio said in an interview Tuesday that the winter storms and strong winds also were to blame for blowing around a lot of trash.
In addition to serving as Sea Isle’s mayor, Desiderio is also a member of the Cape May County Board of Commissioners, the elected body that oversees county government.
While some trash has been swirling around on the road and shoulders, other litter has gotten trapped underneath the guardrails in metal fencing that was installed to prevent turtles from crawling across Sea Isle Boulevard and being struck by cars.
Legions of diamondback terrapins emerge from the marshlands each summer in search of dry sand or soil in which to lay their eggs. The slow-moving turtles often cross over local roads – frequently with deadly consequences.
County engineers devised a novel way in 2019 to protect the diamondbacks from summer traffic on Sea Isle Boulevard, one of the shore’s busiest roads. An intricate barrier of chain-link fencing was installed under the guardrails along both sides of the boulevard to prevent the turtles from venturing out on the road and getting run over.
The fencing, though, acts as an unintended litter trap, marring the appearance of the road. But it also prevents trash from being blown into the environmentally sensitive bays that surround Sea Isle Boulevard.
Turtle fencing was required by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection as part of the regulatory permits issued for the boulevard’s $12.7 million reconstruction project. Both sides of the road were raised by 4.5 feet to protect it from flooding during coastal storms. The multiyear project was completed in 2019.
