Posted on March 16, 2021
A nor’easter over three days in February did an estimated $600,000 damage at Ortley Beach, which was the hardest hit in Toms River.
TOMS RIVER, NJ — Just more than a month after a nor’easter did an estimated $600,000 damage to Ortley Beach, Toms River Township officials are preparing to address the repairs that need to be made to restore the dunes at the beach while working with a federal agency to cover the costs.
The township is expected to begin advertising bids for the work on Friday, township engineer Bob Chankalian told Patch on Thursday night. The township council authorized Toms River’s Purchasing Division and Engineer Division to advertise and receive bids for a dune repair project Ortley Beach, which was the most severely damaged area in the township following the February storms.
A survey of the damage done by state officials last month showed that minor to moderate damage had been done to 72 of New Jersey’s 81 beach sites in the storms. The storms, which hit the state’s coastline between Feb. 1 and Feb. 3, did significant damage to Ortley Beach, which prompted Gov. Phil Murphy to send a letter to federal officials seeking financial assistance in repairing the damage.
Chankalian said that the township has received conceptual approval from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to cover the cost of the work after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers determined that the damage was not severe enough to warrant their assistance.
The $600,000 will cover the cost of bringing in sand, 5,000 linear feet of dune fence, post and rail fence for the walkovers, mat repairs and for the grading that will need to take place to repair the areas of the beach that were most severely damaged. While most of Toms River fared “fairly well” after the nor’easter, about 50 percent of Ortley Beach sustained more damage, Chankalian said.
Chankalian estimates about 14,000 yards of sand was lost during the storm and believes the repairs can be done over a 30-day period once work begins. As soon as the township receives bids for the work and they are approved by the council, work at Ortley Beach will begin. Chankalian said that township crews will be able to address the damage in other areas of Toms River which were not as severely hit.
Like at other sites around the state, Ortley Beach was left with 10-to-12-foot drop-offs as waves from the nor’easter reached 12 feet at the height of the storm. In addition to the drop-offs, many of the dune walkovers at several beaches sustained damage.
While the Army Corps of Engineers would use dredging equipment to make repairs, Toms River does not have the type of equipment to make the repairs and the costs would be too great to deal with the problem in the same way as the Army Corps of Engineers would, Chankalian said Thursday. Rather than using the type of equipment the Army Corps uses for larger projects, this project will use dump trucks and bulldozers for the project.
“You need special equipment that we just don’t have,”Chankalian said Thursday. “I’m just grateful that the Army Corps did what they did (after Superstorm Sandy). …Even though the dunes in some areas took a pretty good shot, (the Army Corps) saved the boardwalk, they saved Ocean Avenue, they saved houses and more than 50 percent of the dune is still there. I’d much rather be trucking in some sand today than rebuilding the roads, the pavement, the lifeguard buildings, it’s a no-brainer.”
The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection will address some of the damage, the Associated Press reported this week. Shawn LaTourette, the acting head of the DEP told the AP that the agency will act to eliminate dangerous conditions at some of the state’s most eroded beach sites.
“One of the things we will make sure to do is get out there ourselves and do work to make sure that there is good ease of access,” LaTourette told the AP in the interview.
LaTourette said in the interview that he could not yet specify which beaches would receive what levels of repair work but said that the damage cannot go unaddressed. The AP report stated that in past winter storms, heavy equipment has been brought in to push sand against the eroded dunes as a way of restoring the walkable slopes down to the sand at public access points.
Chankalian said he hopes to present the township council with bids at their April meeting, which gives township officials six weeks to address the repairs before Memorial Day. The scope of the work that needs to be addressed this time around is about half of what township crews used to do with previous storms, which provides Chankalian with a roadmap of the work that lies ahead.
Work previously done in the area by the Army Corps of Engineers and the New Jersey Department of Environmental Projection Agency should make life easier on the township as they prepare to address the current damage, Chankalian said.
“Hopefully this won’t happen again,” he said. “Don’t get me wrong. The dune is sacrificial. That’s what it’s there for. It’s just sand, but if we know where the weak spots are and we can bolster them up, maybe next time, it won’t be so bad.”
