NORTH WILDWOOD — The city’s sand-starved beaches will be rebuilt this year, with an unusual project planned through the state Department of Transportation’s Office of Maritime Resources.
Mayor Pat Rosenello and Gov. Phil Murphy issued a joint statement Friday announcing the project, a stop-gap measure until a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers project can begin. That project has long been in the planning stages but will not add any sand to the beaches until next year at the earliest.
In the meantime, North Wildwood’s formerly wide beaches are among the most severely eroded in the state, to the point that the city decided to ban cabanas, canopies and beach tents for the summer of 2024.
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“There’s no doubt in my mind that this is an emergency,” Rosenello said Friday. He said the city is one major northeast storm or close call with a hurricane from disaster, he said, with little protection in place for homes and infrastructure.
There are other considerations as well, with summer on the way and almost no beach across much of the community.
Rosenello said he has heard from multiple business owners that bookings are down and that customers have said they intended to avoid North Wildwood this year.
“There’s an absolute economic impact to not having a beach,” he said.
Work could begin in the coming weeks and continue into early July, Rosenello said.
North Wildwood has decided to keep large sun shades and tents off the beach this summer, citing the extremely limited space due to continued erosion.
The state DOT has been dredging waterways in the bays close to North Wildwood this winter. As Rosenello said, the dredge used in that work will be positioned in Hereford Inlet, where a borrow area for sand has been established, and pump sand onto the North Wildwood beach.
The announcement Friday did not include a cost estimate for the work.
Murphy’s press office sent the same statement that North Wildwood released. An emailed response to a question about the cost directed follow-up questions to the DOT, but a DOT spokesperson said all information would come from Murphy’s office.
Rosenello did not have an estimate but said North Wildwood will be happy to pay its share.
“We are ready, willing and able to contribute,” he said.
The city had spent millions a year trucking in huge amounts of sand each winter to shore up its beaches, until erosion meant the route along the beach from where the sand was collected in Wildwood became impassible.
The work will require closing several blocks of the beach to public access at a time. That will be far less disruptive than trucking the sand, which required closing a wide area of the beach, Rosenello said.
“The New Jersey Department of Transportation’s Office of Maritime Resources is currently working to design and authorize a North Wildwood Emergency Beach Nourishment Dredging project that will serve to protect the infrastructure, quality of life, and economy in North Wildwood until the Army Corps of Engineers and NJDEP are able to complete a long-term project,” the joint statement read. “The current plan will begin over the next few weeks and is expected to provide relief to the community over the next few months.”
North Wildwood has begun constructing bulkheads at 15th Avenue, where erosion cut a wide hole in the protective dunes. Mayor Patrick Rosenello said the city had the material on hand already. Earlier this year, the city and the state Department of Environmental Protection sparred over shore protection work.
Rosenello emphasized the bipartisan effort to approve the project, saying former Senate President Steve Sweeney, a Democrat, had worked to secure the project for the predominantly Republican town, along with representatives on both sides of the aisle.
He singled out state Sen. Michael Testa, R-Cape May, Cumberland, Atlantic, for his work with the Democratic Murphy administration to move the project forward.
“Everybody put politics aside. We’re all trying to do the right thing,” Rosenello said.
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