The mayor of one Jersey Shore town says his goal for 2024 is to fortify the beach with sand and other coastal defenses.
“That’s been my New Year’s resolution for the past ten years,” North Wildwood Mayor Patrick Rosenello joked Wednesday. “I’ve done much better on the other resolutions.”
On the onset of another year, the Cape May County beach has yet to receive much-needed sand from a delayed federal project that’s still a year or more away. Borrowing sand from the wide shores of sister city Wildwood — what the town refers to as back-passing — is still impossible, according to local officials. The sliver of beach at 23rd and 25th avenues, they say, has eroded away and is too narrow for sand-loaded trucks to make it through.
The latest inclement weather — snowfall followed by heavy rain, fierce waves and flooding — isn’t helping.
Strong storms, made stronger and more frequent due to climate change, fuel swelling waves that remove sand from beaches and can overtake boardwalks — like residents in North Wildwood saw early Wednesday morning.
At high tide, about 10 blocks of the city’s 36-block beach have been eaten away by periodic erosion and the entire beach has been affected, local officials noted Wednesday. The mayor said the city will re-assess the situation following the storms this week.
“My top priority is shore protection, making sure that the city has preferably a dune and beach system that will protect us in the event of a major storm,” Rosenello said on the phone. “However, we can’t do that without the state of New Jersey.”
New Jersey is on course to surpass $3 billion spent pouring millions of cubic yards of sand onto beaches in the last century. The “strategy” of beach replenishment is necessary, according to Jersey Shore towns like North Wildwood, because it protects shore homes and power lines, and fortifies the very places that serve as economic drivers for the state each summer.
Still, an NJ Advance Media report,…
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