Beach Replenishment, Monitoring Discussed; TI Bridge Reopening

AVALON – Borough Council began its May 13 meeting with a reading of the results from the May 12 municipal election. Avalon is one of the shore communities that have not moved its municipal elections to November in order to coincide with state and federal voting. Mayor Martin Pagliughi, who ran unopposed, was reelected for another four-year term. He has served as Avalon’s mayor since 1991.
Charles Covington and Richard Dean were also reelected to new terms on the borough council. Covington received 419 votes, Dean received 358.
Dean has served on the council since 1987 and Covington since 1991. This year, local businessman James Lutz challenged the incumbents, and received 210 votes. His was the first opposition in a council election since 2007. While Lutz was unsuccessful, the fact that the election had opposition probably had a great deal to do with the much higher turnout of voters. Fully 40 percent of Avalon’s registered voters went to the polls. One Avalon resident at the meeting said, “This is the kind of turnout we get in presidential elections.”
Covington and Dean resumed their seats on council where Covington serves as council president and Dean as vice president.
Beach Replenishment and Monitoring
Council members paid close attention to a discussion by Dr. Stewart Farrell of Stockton University’s Coastal Research Center (CRC) concerning monitoring services the center will undertake during the upcoming beach replenishment project scheduled to start next month.
Avalon has a relationship with the CRC aimed at gathering better data on shoreline change. The higher density data, Farrell said, will give the borough a fuller picture of sand movement and shoreline alterations. Data is valuable in managing beaches and dunes.
The monitoring program with the CRC dates to 1981 according to the latest report prepared for the borough in 2013. In the program, oceanfront beaches are regularly surveyed to gage seasonal and annual changes.
This year, the CRC hopes to use data provided by the beach replenishment contractor to get an even more in depth picture of the shoreline and to better track where the sand goes when it is eroded. “We know it goes south,” Farrell said, but the desire is to have much more precise information.
The beach replenishment project in Avalon is scheduled to begin around June 9 and to be completed by June 29, in time for the Fourth of July celebrations.
The contractor will work continuously 24 hours a day once the project starts. Plans calls for 700,000 cubic years of sand to be placed on Avalon beaches between Eighth Street and 26th Street. About two blocks of beach to the north and south of a work area will be closed temporarily and this process will continue as the project moves south.
Avalon’s last beach fill project was in 2013 following Hurricane Sandy. The dredging project for the Back Bay completed its first phase prior to having to shut down due to environmental regulations and it will begin again in mid-September.
Bridge Reopening
Business Administrator Scott Wahl informed council that the Townsend’s Inlet Bridge that connects Avalon and Sea Isle City will open May 22 prior to the Memorial Day Weekend. He also said that the bridge will probably close again May 26 through May 28, reopening in time for the following weekend. Wahl reported that New Jersey Transit will resume service via the bridge May 23.
To contact Vince Conti, email vconti@cmcherald.com.