STONE HARBOR – Councilwoman Robin Casper has again called for a peer review and a council discussion of a beach maintenance feasibility study by Douglas Gaffney of the Mott MacDonald engineering consulting firm.
Casper, who chairs the council’s natural resources committee, also said at the Tuesday, Nov. 21, meeting of the Borough Council that the committee would include $50,000 in its 2024 budget request for the hiring of a beach consultant.
Casper, who won reelection to her seat in this month’s election, has struggled to get full consideration of the Mott MacDonald study after some council members soured on Gaffney and left the report he authored in limbo.
Following the August submission of the report, for which the borough paid over $175,000, there has never been a substantive discussion of its comments and recommendations by the council in a public forum. There has also been no discussion of the fate of the numerical model that was developed by Gaffney as part of the study.
Casper’s comment on a budget request for a beach consultant may reopen discussion of how the borough goes forward in developing plans for maintaining its beach in the intervals between federally sponsored replenishments.
A set of slides from a December 2022 presentation by Gaffney is available on the borough website.
Contact the author, Vince Conti, at vconti@cmcherald.com.
