Where’d the Sand Go?

AVALON – Avalon Borough Council heard a report on the results of Stockton University Coastal Research Center’s most recent shoreline survey of the municipality’s beaches July 10.
The report was given as the borough was scheduled to receive a federal hydraulic replenishment due between November 2019 and March 2020.
Director and founder of the Coastal Research Center, Dr. Stewart Farrell’s, assessment was that since the last survey, the borough’s beaches lost 74,000 cubic yards of sand as of March 2019.
He said it was a net number, with the north-end beaches accounting for a loss of 104,000 cubic yards, while almost 30,000 cubic yards accumulated south of 28th Street.
This occurrence was the natural loss of sand, and did not include the movement of about 50,000 cubic yards from the middle of the borough to the north-end beaches through the recent backpassing project.
Referring to a recent aerial photograph, Farrell said the state of the beaches was good, with a set of “narrow but useable” beaches in the north of the community.  
Farrell went on to report the results of an analysis he decided to do this year (2019). Noting that beach replenishments in Avalon have been occurring since 1987, Farrell said 10 million cubic yards of sand have been replaced on those beaches in a 32-year period.
The question he asked, “Where did it all go?” The answer, he admitted, surprised him.
Comparing two profiles as a start, Farrell looked at 1997 data and compared it to data from 2018. What he found was the sand was not going south to Stone Harbor and Wildwood, but moving directly out to sea.
At 13th and 14th streets, Farrell’s data showed over 1,000 feet from the beaches at low tide, the sand level had risen by three feet. “If I do the math on that,” Farrell said, “it means that there were over 400,000 cubic yards of additional sand accumulated out in the ocean where it doesn’t do the beaches any good.” Farrell was speaking of the beaches from the jetty to 15th Street.
Farrell noted he needed to analyze more data from other replenishment points before he could speak more definitively about the sand location. Yet, he told council the data so far suggests that sand loss from the beaches ends up with “half the sand going to the middle of the island and the other half directly out to sea,” in the north end.
If confirmed by a more extensive analysis, the finding may be of value in future replenishments, Farrell added.
To contact Vince Conti, email vconti@cmcherald.com.