STRATHMERE, N.J. – Last fall, this was a beach town on the verge of being washed out to sea, the victim of lashing storms and natural erosion that can denude a beach within days.
Nothing had helped. A $600,000 seawall paid for by residents of the Point – a particularly vulnerable section on the north end of this Upper Township barrier island community – couldn’t hold back the sea. Hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of trucked-in rocks and sandbags didn’t do much, either.
What a difference nine months can make.
A $5.7 million project that will deposit 890,000 cubic yards of sand on beaches here got under way July 17 when the wet slurry began to pump through giant, rusty-looking pipes strategically placed along the shoreline. The operation is scheduled to continue around the clock for the rest of the summer.
The sand is pulled from the ocean floor by a giant dredge owned by Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Co., an Oak Brook, Ill., firm that next will replenish the strand in neighboring Sea Isle City. Sea Isle will spend $3.3 million to fatten 20 blocks of its north-end beaches.
The projects are part of a $20.5 million plan to fatten the beaches in those and three other Cape May County resorts – Cape May, North Wildwood, and Stone Harbor – plus Atlantic City and on Long Beach Island within the next year. Congress recently approved $16.3 million for the replenishment; the state and municipalities will provide most of the rest of the money.
