Posted on August 24, 2026
When the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced that South Jersey would receive $99 million in federal funding to replenish beaches in Ocean City, Strathmere, Sea Isle City, Avalon and Stone Harbor, Rep. Jeff Van Drew was quick to claim credit.
But now that beachgoers are complaining the work has disrupted their summer vacations, the congressman has fallen silent.
On the beach near St. Charles Place, swimmers splashed in the ocean, and sunbathers soaked up rays while heavy machinery shifted sand just feet away. Several access points were closed, and a submerged pipe ran along the shoreline for blocks.
“It’s been difficult to find new entrances to the beach. It ruins our routine,” said Kerry Cochran, a Paramus resident spending the day at the Shore.
This summer, visitors have voiced frequent complaints about noise and odor around Ocean City’s downtown beaches during the replenishment project.
For weeks, the Army Corps has worked to restore beaches and dunes after powerful storms caused major erosion last year.
Van Drew and Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works Adam Telle toured the area on Friday, February 13, 2026, to address severe beach erosion along the Jersey Shore.
“I know the replenishment was needed; just the timing was not good,” said Jim Brown, owner of Brown’s Restaurant, who said the project has hurt his family-friendly boardwalk business.
“My afternoons over the Fourth of July weekend, and the time they were here, were off about 50%,” said Brown, whose eatery is celebrating 50 years of serving families, surfers and vacationers who visit the quiet North End of the Ocean City Boardwalk.
The city said the first stage of the project, from 1st Street south to 11th Street, was completed Tuesday. Work has now begun on the final stage, from 1st Street north to Seaview Road.
The Army Corps acknowledged the disruption: “We do recognize that construction can impact the experience for visitors and residents, and we work with the contractor to try to minimize those aspects to the degree possible. They close no more than 1,000 feet of beach as work progresses along the shoreline. Additionally, we would add that the project has to continue 24/7 due to the large costs of mobilizing a dredge to the site.”
Representative Jeff Van Drew and Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works Adam Telle toured severely eroded Jersey Shore beaches on Friday the 13th in February 2026. Now beachgoers say sand replenishment operations are disrupting their vacation schedule
Van Drew is being challenged by Zack Mullock, the Democratic mayor of the city of Cape May.
Mullock was one of several representatives from Cape May County shore towns who met with the New Jersey congressional delegation in Washington, D.C., and officials at U.S. Army Corps of Engineers headquarters looking for federal sand dollars during a session in January organized by the American Coastal Coalition, a lobbying group based in Chevy Chase, Md.
Beach replenishment projects scheduled last year were put on hold by the Trump administration, but Van Drew ally Ocean City Mayor Jay Gillian guaranteed his City Council in January that all the beaches “would absolutely be ready for summer.”
Van Drew boasts that he sponsored the Coastal Storm Risk Management Trust Fund Act, which he claims would create a reliable, long-term funding source for coastal protection projects, but since it was introduced, that bill has been bottled up in at least three House committees: Transportation and Infrastructure, Natural Resources, and Budget.
“If you go down further, it’s a bigger beach, so it’s a little better, and you just have to be flexible,” said Laurie Todd, who owns a home in Ocean City and said she understands the work is necessary.
City officials added that because the Army Corps is investing in protecting so many shore towns and because of limited contractor availability, municipalities cannot schedule the work at their convenience.
Daily updates on progress, open beaches and swimming areas are posted on Ocean City’s website.
Sand-pumping operations were approaching North Street on Thursday morning, so beaches at Stenton Place and North Street near the work area were closed to public access. Pumping will continue 24 hours a day for the duration of the project. Sand ramps will be built over the pipeline at all beach entrances as work moves down the beach.
The project is expected to be completed in September.
While it may look like a simple construction project, beach replenishment is a major engineering effort. In Ocean City, the sand underfoot is not always purely natural; it is often the product of multimillion-dollar intervention.
Ocean City, like all barrier islands, is a dynamic environment. Naturally, these islands shift as sea levels rise and storms push sand from the ocean side to the bay side. But because the city has built a multibillion-dollar community — with a world-famous Boardwalk and thousands of homes — on shifting ground, the island has been effectively pinned in place.
Ocean City is especially prone to erosion because of its geography and proximity to the Great Egg Harbor Inlet, which traps sand and interrupts the natural north-to-south sediment flow that would otherwise nourish beaches. Without human intervention, the Atlantic would eventually reclaim the shoreline, threatening the Boardwalk and coastal homes. Replenishment is not just about giving tourists beach space; it is the city’s primary defense against rising seas.
The process: How to build a beach
When the beach narrows too much, the Army Corps is called in for what is essentially a massive plumbing operation. The method, hydraulic dredging, is a modern engineering marvel.
- Mining the sand: A hopper dredge or cutterhead suction dredge travels roughly one to two miles offshore to a designated borrow area — a spot where the sand matches the natural beach in grain size and color.
- The slurry: The dredge lowers a suction pipe to the seafloor, vacuuming up a mixture of sand and seawater. A cutterhead dredge uses a rotating blade to break up hard-packed sediment.
- The pipeline: The slurry is pumped through submerged steel pipes along the ocean floor and onto the beach.
- Discharge and distribution: The mixture erupts from the pipe onto the shore, where bulldozers and graders spread it to match a specific design profile — ensuring a gentle slope and high berm to absorb wave energy.
- Dewatering: New sand appears dark and muddy at first, saturated with water and organic material, but after days of sun and drainage, it becomes Ocean City’s familiar white sand.
This engineering does not come cheap. A single replenishment cycle for Ocean City’s north end can cost between $10 million and $30 million, depending on sand volume. Because Ocean City is part of a federally authorized 50-year protection plan, costs are shared: the federal government typically covers 65%, with New Jersey and Ocean City splitting the remaining 35%.
In a tourism-dependent town, this is seen as essential. Without a wide beach, the city would lose its primary economic driver. Replenishment is also recurring — major projects happen about every three years. Critics say pumping money into the ocean is a temporary fix, but supporters argue the cost of inaction — losing the Boardwalk and hundreds of oceanfront properties — would be far greater.
The value of replenishment becomes clearest during storms. A wide beach acts as a massive shock absorber, forcing waves to expend energy on sand rather than slamming into the Boardwalk bulkhead or home foundations.
During Superstorm Sandy in 2012, New Jersey coastal areas that had recently been replenished fared significantly better than those that had not. In Ocean City, wider beaches and reinforced dunes were credited with preventing millions of dollars in property damage.
