In Cape May: Army Corps to Attempt to Even Out Beach Slope

CAPE MAY — Offshore dredging will begin later this week to bring sand to the U.S. Coast Guard base beach while the Army Corps of Engineers removes sand from other Cape May beaches in an attempt to remove a slope that has caused head and neck injuries to swimmers.
City Manager Bruce MacLeod said dredging would place 624,000 cubic yards of sand on the beach at the Coast Guard base.
The dredge will be located about four miles offshore, he said. Due to the distance from shore, a booster pump will be used in the pipeline to beach.
The location is a feeder beach. Rather than move down Cape May’s beachfront, the dredge will place all of the sand at the Coast Guard beaches and depend on drift and flow of ocean water to move the sand to Cape May’s beaches, according to MacLeod.
In addition to the dredging, a trial effort will be made by the Army Corps to lessen the slope of some of Cape May’s beaches. The beach slope has produced head and neck injuries.
“We’ll be going through a process called back passing which is taking mechanical equipment and excavating sand from some of our beaches, generally from the area of Convention Hall heading east towards Wilmington Avenue and then loading that sand onto trucks and carrying it down to Wilmington Avenue and placing the sand there,” said MacLeod. “That will range upwards of 70,000 cubic yards.”
“This is an effort to see if this procedure will make an improvement on the beach slope,” he said.
The project is being referred to as a “trial,” and “demonstration process.”
MacLeod said the procedure has been utilized in other locations but each beach has unique tidal condition and the Army Corps is unsure if the work reshape the slope of the beach, if it all.
The Army Corps construction plan designates three areas, the Coast Guard base as Area One, which will receive sand through the dredging process, Wilmington Avenue Beach vicinity as Area Two, and Area Three is beaches between Convention Hall to Wilmington Avenue which is serving as the borrow area to supply sand to Area Two.
MacLeod said the completion date for the project on or before March 1, 2012.
Two years ago, Cape May experienced 32 C-Spine (neck, cervical and spine) injury calls.
One year ago, the city reported 11 C-Spine injuries along the city’s beaches with eight injuries in July and three in August.
At issue, beaches with sharp drop offs may be causing neck and spine injuries for body surfers and surfers here as a result of sand replenishment by Army Corps of Engineers. The Corps have been replenishing the city’s beaches since October 1999.
Those who body surf were affected the most by running into a wall of sand at the shoreline.