By SUZANNE MARINO
Staff Writer
MARGATE – After a meeting with three New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection representatives, Margate City Commissioner John Swift said that dredging for the back bay in Margate appears to be much closer to reality.
At the New Jersey Conference of Mayors held April 12 in Atlantic City, Swift met with Assemblyman Frank Blee, and the two discussed the need for dredging in the bays and canals around Margate. Blee helped Swift secure a meeting with Ben Kaiser, supervising engineer for coastal engineering; David Risilia, principal environmental specialist for the Office of Dredging, and Bill Dixon, supervising environmental specialist for coastal engineering. Swift’s meeting in Trenton at the DEP took place April 17.
Together they looked at a timeline that documented the city’s efforts for more than a decade to get dredging.
The state appropriated nearly $750,000 for the city to dredge in 1996, according to Margate City Clerk Tom Hiltner, and it was unclear if that funding was still there after all this time while the permitting process dragged on.
One of the issues cleared up during Swift’s meeting with DEP officials was that the funding is still available.
The city submitted an application in 2001 to the DEP Office of Dredging and Sediment Technology, and later that year an application was sent to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
From 2001 moving forward, the city has been diligent in trying to secure a permit to dredge. It has hired experts like Stewart Farrell and Norbert Psuty to collect and interpret data and bring information back to help with the ongoing attempt to get the back bays and canals dredged. In 2004 Cyril Galvin prepared plans for a new channel in Beach Thorofare using data collected from Farrell.
A huge part of the delay has been dredge spoils and where to put them. The permitting process cannot go to completion without securing a location for the spoils. After leaving the DEP, Swift said what he learned is that the city has several options to explore and that three viable locations for the spoils are under discussion. Swift said he could not divulge the locations because they are still under negotiation.
Margate has also been given the green light to explore the possibility of constructing a controlled disposal facility to dispose of the spoils that are the byproduct of any dredging project.
The locations that are approved for dredging are the Orient and Sunset canals, and officials are looking to add to that the Bayshore Lagoon and the area behind the Log Cabin, but at this point there is nothing in stone.
The additional area in the back bay where shifting sands are creating a problem for recreational boaters is along Amherst Avenue near the Washington Avenue Municipal Dock. That area becomes trickier to approve because of a protected clam bed habitat.
Hiltner said the city is planning to dock a police boat at Washington Avenue and appeal to the state Office of Homeland Security to request dredging to keep the waterway open for police, a plan officials hope will be instrumental in getting some kind of dredging in the back bays. TOP
