By DONALD WITTKOWSKI
Bob and Sharon Goffredi, homeowners in Sea Isle City for 47 years, have seen many storms pummel the beaches and sand dunes near their house on 89th Street.
But what they witnessed on Saturday shocked even them – a bizarre landscape in which the dunes had been sheared away by the ocean and the top, powdery layer of beach sand was washed out to sea to create a virtually bare shoreline.
“Exactly four years ago, I was standing here and it was the same thing – 12-foot cliffs,” Bob said of the severely eroded dunes between 88th and 92nd streets in the Townsends Inlet section of Sea Isle.
Not mincing words, Sharon noted that the raging ocean had “pounded” the beaches and dunes. She wondered whether this was among the most serious damage she and her husband have seen in all their time living in Sea Isle.
Her thoughts then turned to what could make things even worse.
“We’re going into hurricane season and if something doesn’t happen, we’re in trouble,” she said, expressing hope that the city will soon replenish the damaged dunes and beaches.
The shoreline will indeed be replenished with new sand in 2023 as part of an estimated $30 million federal project that will include restoring the beaches in Sea Isle, Strathmere and the southern part of Ocean City.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the federal agency that oversees beach restoration projects, anticipates that it will award a contract for the project next March, Sea Isle Mayor Leonard Desiderio announced earlier in the year.
At this point, it hasn’t been determined exactly how much new sand will be used to restore the beaches. Desiderio also noted that it is not yet clear which sections of the beachfront will be replenished.
In the summer of 2020, Sea Isle’s beaches were widened and replenished with more than 750,000 cubic yards of new sand between 28th and 52nd streets in the midsection of town and from 74th to 93rd streets in Townsends Inlet at the southern tip of the island.
Sea Isle is on a three-year cycle for beach replenishment as part of a 50-year agreement with the Army Corps of Engineers.
Besides the aesthetic value of having wide, powdery beaches, the city will also benefit from the replenishment project by having a bigger barrier of sand and dunes to protect homes, businesses and local roads from the ocean’s storm surge. Dunes act as a first line of defense during storms, but they can take a beating in the process.
This is hardly the first time the dunes between 88th and 92nd streets have been badly eroded. A walk along the beach Saturday revealed huge chunks of sand washed away by the churning surf, leaving cliff-like walls that tower more than 15 feet high in some spots.
Some of the pathways to the beach in the same area were blocked off by barriers and red tape that said “danger.” At the end of the pathways, there were steep drop-offs onto the beach.
Bob and Sharon Goffredi, along with Bonnie Leonard, their neighbor on 89th Street, were amazed that so much sand on the beach had simply disappeared.
“You usually have sand like that covering the beaches,” Leonard said, pointing toward the dunes.
Mike Jargowsky, Sea Isle’s emergency management coordinator, could not be reached for comment Saturday about the erosion.
Bob Goffredi speculated that Hurricanes Danielle and Earl, which have been spinning far out in the Atlantic in recent days, may have unleased some unusually high tides that caused Sea Isle’s beach erosion.
He also wondered whether the rock jetties that sandwich the beaches between 88th and 92nd streets contributed to the damage.
“Unless they do something about the jetties or something else, it’s not going to stop,” Goffredi said.
A little way down the beach, homeowners Joyce and Todd Jasinski, their daughter, Mia, and Mia’s fiancé, Alvaro Mendez, expressed concern over the eroded beaches and dunes. The Jasinskis own a home on 90th Street. They stood next to a sand fence that had been damaged by the ocean in recent days
“When we bought our house 31 years ago, we had a nice beach in Sea Isle,” Joyce Jasinski said while lamenting the lack of sand on Saturday.
