2 weeks Ago
Facebook Twitter WhatsApp SMS Email Print Copy article link Save UPPER TOWNSHIP — The northern tip of Strathmere looks increasingly likely to have no beach access for another summer, after erosion cut steep cliffs into the dunes in that neighborhood. At the Beach Patrol headquarters on Williams Avenue, the beach path is blocked. The cliff at the end of the path there is only a foot or two, less at the vehicle access point.
But the paths to the north appear inaccessible for most people, offering a sheer drop-off of seven to eight feet. “It’s disappointing,” said resident Colleen Palmer Jones. “You pay a premium to be in a beach community.
You want to be able to get to the beach.” She has only been in the neighborhood for a few years, and has seen the dune path leading to the beach closed more often than not. It had been possible to walk around through a section of Corsons Inlet State Park other years, but now the high tide does not leave enough beach, and Jones said it could be dangerous if the water starts coming in and there is no way to climb up the path and off the beach.
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“Public works is recommending that we close down some of the beaches from Tecumseh north due to the erosion problem,” Joe Verruni, the temporary township administrator, told committee members. From Tecumseh Avenue, there are nine blocks of beach in Strathmere. A new dune built last winter in the north end of Strathmere remains in place, but the beach has eroded quickly even without a significant coastal storm.
A report found a quarter of the sand added in early 2024 has eroded. Plans are to post signs warning that the damaged area of beach is not safe. “The wooden groins are exposed.
It’s a dangerous situation. We hope that some of the sand will come back,” Verruni said. When the area erodes, decades' worth of wooden structures created in earlier attempts to hold sand in the area become exposed.
The submerged wood can be dangerous. Sand tends to erode in the winter and accumulate in spring, but expectations are that at least some of the dune paths will remain closed. “We need a beach replenishment project,” Mayor Curtis Corson said in an interview after the meeting.
Strathmere has a long-term commitment from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to rebuild beaches as they erode.
The next one is expected in 2027, meaning more summers of limited beach access. The issue is nothing new. Before the last significant beach replenishment in 2023, several blocks of access in Strathmere’s north end had been closed off for years.
While today there are wooden fence slats blocking the way where the dunes have been the most eroded, there had previously been dune fencing and warnings blocking the pathways. By the time beach replenishment work began in the winter of 2023, there were no more cliffs at the foot of the dunes. There were no dunes left at all.
Tides reached a long-buried rock wall installed to keep erosion from destroying the road and houses. That was not the worst that Strathmere has seen. In 2008, erosion damaged homes, and in 2014, neighbors told a Philadelphia Inquirer reporter that most of the state beach and dunes had been washed away.
The final piece of a $33.7 million beach replenishment project is expected to be completed before Memorial Day, with fresh sand being added to the south end of Sea Isle City. It’s not a problem with an easy solution.
Beach and erosion experts have long said barrier islands, like the one that includes Strathmere and Sea Isle City, are mobile, rolling back and forth with the changing climate and seas for eons. Stone and steel barriers may protect roads and houses from the water, but they tend to speed the process of erosion. Jones said she has been looking at what other communities have done.
“I’m open to any ideas,” she said. Jones joined the Strathmere residents association in October, and expressed surprise that she has already ended up as president. She had offered to help.
The position will help her meet people in the close-knit year-round seaside community, she said. The solution presented by the state and federal governments calls for rebuilding beaches as they erode, an expensive project. Now, most beach towns in New Jersey have a federal replenishment agreement, and about $3 billion has gone into beach replenishment in New Jersey since the first long-term federal agreement in Cape May more than 35 years ago.
Strathmere’s last project was part of a $33.7 million Army Corps project that also added sand to beaches in Ocean City and Sea Isle. Within a year, about a quarter of the added sand was gone, according to an engineering report presented in December.
Contact Bill Barlow: 609-272-7290 [email protected] Twitter @jerseynews_bill Get Government & Politics updates in your inbox! Stay up-to-date on the latest in local and national government and political topics with our newsletter. Reporter Author facebook Author twitter Author email {{description}} Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items.
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