Margate hires attorney to deal with groin concerns

MARGATE – The city hired attorney Neil Yoskin of the firm Sokol, Behot, and Fiorenzo in Princeton last week to handle issues related to the proposed groin on the Ventnor-Margate border.
His fee is not to exceed $10,000 for work related to the groin, city solicitor Mary Siracusa said at the Feb. 21 City Commission meeting. Yoskin’s first task will be to review the applications that have been made to the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection.
Nearly a year ago the city hired coastal geomorphologist Norbert Psuty, head of the Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences at Rutgers University, to study the plans for the proposed groin.
Psuty determined that, considering the plans he had reviewed, the proposed groin would not have a severe detrimental effect on Margate beaches. He recommended modifications to the groin, which were cited in a letter from the city of Margate to the city of Ventnor. His suggestions were also forwarded to the DEP.
His recommendations included reducing the length and height of the groin. As a matter of course, the DEP then turned the plans for the proposed groin over to the Stevens Institute for its comments. The institute made changes to both the height and length of the groin, but rather than reduce the dimensions, as Margate suggested, the institute increased the dimensions of the structure.
Week after week at the regular weekly meeting of the Margate City Commission, city engineer Ed Walberg’s report would detail who his office had reached out to in an effort to get a copy of the revised plans. But Walberg was unable to get those plans.
Meanwhile, city fathers in Ventnor were seeking help from Margate to allow trucks to access the proposed construction site by using Fredericksburg Avenue in Margate to transport the materials necessary to build the groin. Margate has declined to give its permission until it finds out more about the scope of the project.
“This is all about protecting Margate beaches and protecting Margate residents, that is all it is,” city administrator Tom Hiltner said Wednesday. Hiltner added that he filed an Open Public Records Act request to get a copy of the groin plans from the DEP.
He said the plans were received in Margate Thursday, Feb. 22 and are now being reviewed.
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