North Wildwood Emergency Beach Work Explained

A few weeks ago, Hurricane Ian caused deviating damage to Cape Coral in Florida and many other areas in the Southeastern United States.

As this storm moved on its remnants collided with a low front that was sitting off the coast of New Jersey and Delaware.

This combination of these storm systems created the ideal situation for heavy flooding and storm erosion.

While Wildwood and Wildwood Crest have seen a growing beach for the past decade, North Wildwood’s beaches have been shrinking.  Year after year North Wildwood has been in a cycle of having to replenish its beaches.

Prior to 2006, North Wildwood was able to do this by dredging the inlet and bringing it to the land but a new DEP ruling says that this is not allowed anymore. Their ruling was that dredging the Hereford Inlet is a breach of the Coastal Barrier Resources Act (CBRA) by U.S. Fish and Wildlife.

The cities of North Wildwood and Avalon are in litigation with the state, but in the meanwhile, they have to do something to protect not just the beach but their properties.

In North Wildwood they came up with a system with would allow them to ‘borrow’ sand from Wildwood by digging up the beach and hauling them to holding areas in North Wildwood. Once the Spring storms die down, they then dump the sand in place.

This is a good system for now but Hurricane Ian had other plans.

Since we had four days of the beaches being battered it caused significant damage to the sand dunes from 13th street to 16th street. Currently, there is a 10-15 foot drop that is a safety hazard to the public.

As we were filming the damage to the dunes, which you can watch at the bottom of this page, kids were running up and down the dunes. Clearly, this is something that could become an issue.

On Tuesday, October 18th, the city of North Wildwood held an emergency city council meeting to authorize emergency work to fix these dunes.

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The fix would not only stop people from getting hurt but also rebuilt the safety net that protects the properties on the other side.

At this time there is a bulkhead that starts at 3rd ave and runs until 12th street. The damaged sections, 13-16, do not have a bulk head making this a very vulnerable section.

In that section is the North Wildwood beach patrol headquarters. The berm of the dune in that section is cut in half so to protect the building they are doing two things.

First, and starting today, October 21st, they are building up the dunes once again by laying down sand in front of it. Next, they are ordering 400 feet of steel bulkhead material that will be built in front of the station.

There is no date on when that project will start but at the present moment getting the dune graded out is the biggest priority.

Below is the drone footage showing how bad the dune system was after the Hurricane Ian incident.

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