Posted on April 18, 2022
The next periodic beach replenishment project for Long Beach Island, tentatively slated for later this year, has not received federal funding under fiscal year 2022.
“The project remains eligible for periodic nourishment in fiscal year 2023 pending federal funding,” said Steve Rochette, public affairs officer for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Philadelphia District.
If or when federal funding comes through, there would be a delay before construction could begin due to getting a contract ready for bidding, Army Corps officials said last fall when asked about the status of the 2022 replenishment project.
The Barnegat Inlet to Little Egg Inlet Coastal Storm Risk Management project, also known as the Long Beach Island beachfill project, was developed and designed “to reduce the risk of loss of lives and damages to property and infrastructure from the waves, erosion, high tides and surges” associated with major storm events, according to the project’s purpose statement.
At the time of Superstorm Sandy, nearly a decade ago, only Surf City, Harvey Cedars and a portion of the Brant Beach section of Long Beach Township had initial work completed by the Army Corps. The beaches in Harvey Cedars and Surf City were repaired due to damage from 2011’s Hurricane Irene. After Sandy, the Corps fully restored beaches in all three communities.
Last July, the Corps undertook a dredge project that could fortify beaches in between beach replenishment work. The dredge Murden suctioned sand from the seabed in Barnegat Inlet, just north of Barnegat Light, before unloading it nearshore off Harvey Cedars in the vicinity of Hudson Avenue south to Union Avenue.
The project was one of 10 selected nationwide for testing innovative approaches to the beneficial use of dredge materials, Keith Watson, project manager for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, said at the time. The “ultimate goal” of the project was to prove dredge materials could have a positive effect on stabilizing the shoreline, he said.
The inlet is dredged twice annually for safe navigation purposes, with the sand typically deposited off Barnegat Light. This project, however, called for the sand to be hauled and released off Harvey Cedars, which was chosen because of its history of chronic beach erosion. The sand placement area represented one-third of the borough’s beaches.
In December 2020, the Army Corps completed dredging part of the Oyster Creek channel, just north of Barnegat Inlet, in Barnegat Bay. The project took about a month to complete. The sediment is being used to create the first lift of a new island, according to the Corps’ Philadelphia District.
“The island was designed to mimic the environmental and protective successes we have had with the two adjacent existing dredged material islands,” the Corps has said.
The Corps maintains the federal channel of New Jersey’s 117-mile-long portion, beginning at the Manasquan Inlet and ending at the Cape May-Lewes ferry terminal of the Intracoastal Waterway. In total, the ICW is a 3,000-mile inland waterway running from Boston south along the Atlantic Seaboard, around the southern tip of Florida and on to the Gulf Coast to Brownsville, Texas. It runs through the bay areas west of LBI.
The dredging of the Oyster Creek channel was part of a larger project to deepen certain areas of the ICW. In November 2019, the Corps awarded a more than yearlong contract to Barnegat Bay Dredging of Harvey Cedars to dredge specific areas of the ICW in an effort to help the Coast Guard maintain aids to navigation in one of the most traversed areas of the waterway.
