North Wildwood, a Jersey Shore town long plagued by coastal erosion, on Friday applied to the state to build an emergency steel bulkhead to ward off the sea.
The “emergency authorization request” was sent to the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP) roughly a week after a dune breach was reported at 13th Avenue.
Waves, which tend to swell amid strong storms resulting from a shifting and warmer climate, could be seen sending water toward nearby wetlands. Further inundation, local officials implored, poses a threat to shore homes, power lines and other city infrastructure.
“Every high tide it just gets a little bit worse,” North Wildwood Mayor Patrick Rosenello said Friday, moments before the 20-page emergency letter was sent.
North Wildwood has not received protection on its beach from sand replenishment for about a decade as a larger federal U.S. Army Corps of Engineers project has faced delays. That project, agency officials confirmed, is not expected to benefit North Wildwood until 2025.
In addition, “back passing” sand from the wider beach in Wildwood, which North Wildwood previously did regularly, is now impossible because heavy sand-loaded trucks can’t travel down shore areas left too thin by severe erosion, Rosenello said.
“Most recently, several coastal storm events between Jan. 9 and 14 of 2024 have resulted in a significant loss of sand from both the beach berm and remnant dune system leaving a multi-block section of the city at peril and without an effective barrier to mitigate storm surges and associated wave action,” Peter Lomax, managing principal of Lomax Consulting Group, wrote on behalf of North Wildwood in Friday’s bulkhead request.
A NJDEP spokesman said the department would review the emergency application and has 15 days to make a decision.
While towns across the Jersey Shore face erosion and often need plenty of sand to keep visitor numbers high and maintain safety for beachgoers, no municipality is in quite the precarious situation North Wildwood is in. A Stockton University expert said not only is the city more vulnerable to erosion because of where it is geographically, but local politics and delays in federal work are further forestalling efforts to bolster the beach.
At high tide, about 10 blocks of North Wildwood’s beach are gone and another 26 blocks have also been impacted by coastal erosion, according to the mayor.
In 2020, the state cited the Cape May County city for unauthorized beach repairs and later issued a $12.8 million fine.
The $33 million legal dispute remains ongoing with the latest court proceedings scheduled for the next several weeks, an attorney for the city said earlier this month. Moreover, expected beach replenishment from the Army Corps project still needs to overcome additional hurdles like private and public real estate easements.
In making a case for emergency repairs, North Wildwood consultants said it makes sense for a steel bulkhead to be built between the middle of 12th Avenue stretching to 15th Avenue, where another bulkhead currently exists. Other steel barriers have been built on the beach, including around the lifeguard headquarters.
North Wildwood’s plan for a bulkhead, which would span about 752 linear feet, looks as follows:
As of Friday, Rosenello said the 13th Avenue breach did not appear to expand to other areas. However, he added that without intervention local officials expected the hole to grow and planned to continue monitoring the area.
“The proposed bulkhead installation will most expeditiously mitigate the imminent threat to severe loss of property and further environmental degradation that will result from a breach in the remnant dune system,” Lomax told the state in the letter.
To read the emergency authorization request, click here.
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Steven Rodas may be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on X at @stevenrodasnj.
©2024 Advance Local Media LLC. Visit nj.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
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