N. Wildwood’s on its Own Financially to Save Beaches

NORTH WILDWOOD – North Wildwood is bringing upwards of 200,000 cubic yards of sand from Wildwood to its beaches in dump trucks in what has become an annual replenishment project.
Mayor Patrick Rosenello said the city spent $3.5 million of its own money in 2020 to protect its beachfront.
“In 2020, we had to extend our steel bulkhead from 7th to 14th streets at a cost of approximately $2 million, and we’re going to spend about $1.5 million more for a back pass,” Rosenello said, speaking of the process of moving sand from beaches where it is plentiful, and trucking and spreading it to widen the eroding beaches.
Five Mile Beach is the only island on New Jersey’s coast that does not periodically receive a federally funded hydraulic shore protection project from the Army Corps of Engineers and the state Department of Environmental Protection, according to Rosenello.
“Had we not acted in the manner we acted, we would have, without a doubt, lost sections of John F. Kennedy Boulevard,” Rosenello said, in an interview with the Herald. “What North Wildwood has been doing the last few years has been paid for 100% by North Wildwood.”
Discussions are ongoing to become part of the Army Corps’ program, and Rosenello said U.S. Rep Jeff Van Drew (R-2nd) has been very helpful the last year in understanding the problem and working toward a federally aided solution.
“We have been working toward it for many years,” said Rosenello, adding he is optimistic North Wildwood would be included in federally funded programs in the next three to five years.
Known for wide beaches, the Wildwoods have been overlooked by the federal agencies. In some parts of Wildwood, the beaches are so wide that taxi services have been offered from the boardwalk to the surf, and camel rides to get people near the ocean have been proposed before the Wildwood Board of Commissioners.
Expansive amusement piers jet out onto the beaches because there is so much sand between the boardwalk and the ocean, but on the north end of Five Mile Beach, erosion has recently become critical.
“In the early 2000s, North Wildwood had 1,000-plus feet of dry beach, even at our worst location right now, Third Avenue and John F. Kennedy Boulevard. There really was not, at that time, any urgency for that project to come to the Wildwoods,” Rosenello explained.
In 2014, as the problem with erosion worsened, the city took on back passing to try to save its beaches and dunes.
“The situation in North Wildwood changed very rapidly,” Rosenello said. “We certainly are behind the eight ball.”
“We’ve lost entire dune systems for six or seven blocks because the City of North Wildwood hasn’t had a hydraulic beach fill to assist,” said Ronald Simone, city administrator, in an interview with the Herald. “Migratory birds on North Wildwood’s beach haven’t hatched there in years because the beach is so significantly eroded.”
Without hydraulic dredging, which is part of the Army Corps’ renourishment in other towns, North Wildwood is not able to adequately solve the problem, Rosenello explained.
This forces the city to truck sand, year after year, and take more extreme measures, such as building and then extending a steel seawall to protect its boundaries, valuable homes and businesses.
“Those are short-term solutions, as we await a larger hydraulic lift project,” Rosenello said.
He estimates that five times the amount of sand that is feasible to move in a back passing project, like the one currently underway, is what would be needed to get the job done right.
Still, it is essential to constantly make the temporary fix, Rosenello explained.
“The primary motivation is protecting the eastern side of our town,” Rosenello said. “Our primary motivation for doing these projects is protecting the public and private infrastructure on the east side of town and the second is providing a bathing beach. Both are incredibly important.”
The project is mutually beneficial to Wildwood – which does not charge North Wildwood for the sand – since some of the sand used is dug out of outfall pipes, saving Wildwood from having to take on the project.
It is stockpiled on the beaches of Wildwood and North Wildwood, where trucks haul it during low tide (they aren’t able to get around the amusement piers during high tide, said the mayor).
Rosenello said they have learned from experience to wait and spread the sand as close to the start of summer as possible, so it is not wiped away again.
The spreading will begin in April and continue through early May, according to the mayor, who added that he anticipates sand would continue to be stockpiled and trucked north until then.
“The situation has gotten to the critical stage. We are losing dune systems and these coastal forests that have existed for 50-plus years. They’ve been annihilated. We can’t get this larger project underway quick enough,” Rosenello said.
To contact Shay Roddy, email sroddy@cmcherald.com.