COURT HOUSE – The Township Committee has awarded a contract for a study of Beach Avenue and Reeds Beach Road to identify flood mitigation strategies and whether those strategies might be eligible for Federal Emergency Management Agency funding.
The award approved Feb. 3, to Colliers Engineering & Design of Mount Laurel, is not to exceed $20,000. The results of the study should improve the quality of any application to FEMA for funding to implement the identified strategies.
Reeds Beach property owners have come to Township Committee meetings on several occasions to plead for help with significant erosion problems affecting their bay-side community.
The residents of the tiny enclave along the Delaware Bay say the community is well past the stage of nuisance flooding. Normal tides now sweep across North Beach Avenue, they say, damaging the road, limiting access by residents to their homes and endangering the ability of emergency vehicles to respond when needed.
Marc Devito, a spokesman for the community, said residents have reached out to the state Department of Environmental Protection and to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The Corps does have a one-time project authorized for the area that calls for creating an 80-foot-wide berm at an elevation of 5.5 feet North American Vertical Datum over a projected length of 6,800 feet, but the project is aimed at ecosystem restoration, not ongoing shore protection. It has been idle for many years due to a lack of congressionally appropriated funding.
Mayor Chris Leusner has told the residents that the township has expressed concerns to the DEP. Any fix for the problem will be expensive and require state and federal permits, placing it beyond the resources of the township, he has said.
Leusner also suggested that one course of action might be raising the road, but he added that that strategy might pose new problems: Homes that are then lower than the road.
The new study, according to a representative of Colliers, will allow the township and the residents to determine if any potential solutions to the problem would fit within FEMA funding guidelines.
Contact the reporter, Vince Conti, at vconti@cmcherald.com.
