By DONALD WITTKOWSKI
“Please Keep Off the Dunes!”
Signs with those words are scattered all over Sea Isle City as a reminder to beachgoers to stay off the environmentally sensitive sand dunes.
To further protect the dunes, the city is now looking to a federal agency to establish a formal “dune line” for Sea Isle that will be consistent and uniform.
By a 5-0 vote, City Council introduced an ordinance Tuesday to adopt a citywide dune line that would be designated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers along the entire length of the island from First Street to 93rd Street.
“The city has an interest in ensuring that the beaches, dunes and dune areas (are) protected,” the ordinance says.
A public hearing and final vote on the ordinance are scheduled for the Nov. 22 Council meeting. The ordinance will also be reviewed by the city’s Planning Board to make sure it is consistent with Sea Isle’s master plan.
Currently, Sea Isle does not have a formal dune line, City Solicitor Paul Baldini said. The dunes were changed when the Army Corps of Engineers replenished the city’s eroded beaches in recent years.
“So all those dune lines have now changed because we don’t have the same dunes in place that we had five years ago,” Baldini told the Council members at Tuesday’s meeting.
Fortunately for Sea Isle, the Army Corps conducted extensive engineering work as part of the beach replenishment projects, Baldini noted.
“So what the city is trying to do is to take advantage of all that engineering work that was paid for by the federal government and utilize all of that engineering work to establish a citywide dune line,” he said.
By using the dune line established by the Army Corps, it will save the city the time and expense of hiring its own engineers to conduct that type of work, Baldini explained.
Over the years, the dune line had become “pockmarked” because Sea Isle’s property owners had hired their own engineers to conduct surveys for different construction projects that came close to the dunes, Baldini said.
“But we now have a clean, clear dune line,” he said in an interview while referring to the engineering work conducted by the Army Corps.
Contractors and engineers who build projects for Sea Isle’s property owners will now be able to look at digital maps of the dune line established by the Army Corps to avoid any confusion.
“The dune line that we’re proposing is on city property. There is none of it on private property,” Baldini said.
Currently, no buildings, carports, garages, parking spaces, decks, terraces, patios and other structures may be built closer than 10 feet of the dunes under Sea Isle’s zoning laws.
But the new ordinance will reduce the so-called “setback” to the dune line from 10 feet to 6 feet. Baldini said the dunes will still be protected by reducing the setback to 6 feet.
At the same time, the new 6-foot threshold will reduce the number of applications to the city’s Zoning Board for variances to encroach into the setback area near the dunes, he noted.
“When we look at most of the encroachments, not into the dune, this is just into the setback from the dune, most of those variances have been somewhere between 10 feet and 6 feet. So we’re hoping that will eliminate them (the variances) and will still keep people off of the dunes,” Baldini said.
