Posted on October 16, 2023
When looking across the water, the sand is being tossed aside as if the dredge in Barnegat Inlet is annoyed. The federal government dredge Merritt has been spitting shoaled sand 80 feet to the side at the inlet for the past week.
The description of the channel maintenance job reads more like a spy novel: to provide a safe, reliable navigation channel “for a critical refuge between the Atlantic Ocean and the bay.”
The U.S. Coast Guard counts the site as a “hazardous inlet” that “requires a safe channel to fulfill their Homeland Security mission and critical life safety, search and rescue operations,” according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which is in charge of the dredging. The ongoing engineering project battles an inlet where surf greater than 8 feet kicks up 10% (36 days) or more of the year.
The project specifies to keep a channel forged through the inlet and through the outer bar “of suitable hydraulic characteristics” that is 8 feet deep through the inlet and 10 feet deep through the outer bar.
The 156-foot Merritt “is primarily dredging the outer bar, but may occasionally work between the jetties as well,” said Steve Rochette, public affairs officer for the Army Corps’ Philadelphia District, as the most recent work got underway the first week of October.
Besides for safe navigation, “the project is critical to a large fishing fleet of full-time commercial, charter and recreational vessels that contribute to the economic value of the nation and an annual direct fish value of over $25M/year” (counted as of 2017), as described online by the Army Corps.
The channel runs northwest from the gorge in the inlet to Oyster Creek channel and on through the Oyster Creek channel “to deep water in the bay.” The project also calls for keeping Barnegat Light Harbor connected with the main inlet channel at 8 feet deep and 200 feet wide.
The Merritt was designed in Philadelphia for maintaining shallow draft waters.
“She’s based in Wilmington, N.C. but has been working in Cape May and Ocean counties in the past couple of weeks,” Rochette said.
The first jetty project for the channel was done in 1940. In 1991, to correct a “design deficiency,” a new, 4,250-long south jetty was placed parallel to the north jetty that had been there. Carved out was “a navigation channel 300 feet wide to a depth of 10 feet below mean low water from the outer bar in the Atlantic Ocean to the north end of the existing sand dike in Barnegat Bay.”
