Posted on June 22, 2017
By Nanette LoBiondo Galloway, ShoreNewsToday
The long-awaited Absecon Island dunes project will get underway in Ventnor this week, more than three weeks later than the most recently announced schedule.
NJ Department of Environmental Protection and Army Corps of Engineers officials said the hopper dredge owned by Weeks Marine, Inc. of Cranford, which successfully bid on the $63 million project, was diverted to Ortley Beach in northern Ocean County to finish up a dune repair project there before moving south Ventnor.
The dredge moored off the coast will start pumping the sand needed to build a 100-foot-wide berm and dune to an elevation of 12.75 feet directly in front of the Ventnor boardwalk. The project will begin at Fredericksburg Avenue and work its way north to Richards Avenue, before completing renourishment of the rest of the beach and then moving south to work in Margate, and finally, Longport.
The dune in Ventnor will complete the 2004 dunes project, which was renourished in 2011. However, when Hurricane Sandy hit the shore, it washed away an eighth-mile portion of the dune near the Margate border.
A pipe that will be used to move the sand northward has already been laid at Fredericksburg Avenue and will be flipped to pump south once the Ventnor portion of the project is completed.
Ventnor Commissioner Lance Landgraf, director of planning and development for the CRDA, said residents and beach goers would be inconvenienced somewhat. The work will be done in 1,000 foot sections as it rolls north at a cost of about $100,000 a day, and have fencing around it to keep people away.
Because residents and visitors like to visit the same beach or the one closest to their homes, they will have to walk a block or two north or south to relax next to the ocean. Each section will be closed for about a week.
Landgraf said Ventnor has enthusiastically supported the project from day one, but expressed frustration when the city learned in May that a revised schedule would have the project occurring during the summer months instead of at the end of August and September.
At a hastily called press conference on May 4, Landgraf said the city has endured dune replenishments during the summer twice before.
“It is important work, but so is the summer tourism season,” he said.
Ventnor had embarked on a campaign leading up to summer to increase activities in the hopes they would attract millennials and encourage investment in a city still struggling to recover from Hurricane Sandy.
The city met with state officials and received some concessions, including moving the pipe away from the Ventnor Fishing Pier where there were planned activities.
Since then, the city has conceded that it needs the dunes more than it needs to be contentious.
“It is what it is,” Mayor Beth Holtzman said at the June 15 commission meeting.
Weeks Marine will provide security for the project to keep beachgoers or the curious from getting near the work area.
“They will put signs up on the boardwalk with information about what’s happening and why they are doing the project, and they will move them as they go down,” Landgraf said.
The contractor extended the time it will be working in Ventnor from 35 to 47 days, which Landgraf said was “a little disconcerting.”
“But, we need the sand, we need the dunes, they do protect us,” he said. “They do their job when they are there.”
The dunes will be the same height as what is there now, Landgraf said, and be located in front of the boardwalk. The contract also includes the construction of dune crossovers, fencing, dune grass plantings, and the repair or extension of existing storm water outfalls and drainage structures.
“They will re-slope the beach from the toe of the dune out into the ocean providing a more gradual slope that will help absorb the waves even more,” Landgraf said.
The dune will jog-in slightly at the end of the boardwalk, but not drastically, and then continue down to Margate, he said.
“They are here and we will deal with it,” Landgraf said about the heavy equipment that will shape the dune. “We will hear them, they will be going 24-7. It will not be a pleasant thing, so install your air conditioners.”
The entire Absecon Island project was delayed when Margate City challenged the state’s acquisition of easements needed to build the dune. After voters approved a non-binding referendum in November 2013 to stop the project, Margate spent upwards of $300,000 in attorney fees, but lost in Superior Court. The state has still not settled on the value of those easements, but the project is moving forward.
The cost of building the dune is being totally funded by the federal government through the Disaster Relief Appropriations Act of 2013. While Ventnor will incur no cost to extend its dune system to the Margate border, it will pay $440,917 remaining in a previous bond issue to cover the cost of replenishment of the existing dunes. The federal government picks up 65 percent of the cost of re-nourishment, while the state and municipality split the rest.
The dunes project is part of Governor Chris Christie’s effort to build one contiguous sand dune over the entire length of the state to protect shorefront communities from experiencing the wrath of coastal storms as it did during Hurricane Sandy.
Source: ShoreNewsToday
