Q&A with Mayor Rosenello on State of N. Wildwood’s Beaches, City’s Ongoing Battle with DEP

NORTH WILDWOOD – North Wildwood Mayor Patrick Rosenello took questions from a Herald reporter on the state of the city’s beaches and his ongoing feud and court battle with the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP). Some responses have been lightly edited for clarity and brevity. 
Do you think the DEP “has it out” for North Wildwood? 
ROSENELLO: I don’t. I think that they have created such a bureaucratic entanglement of their own policies that they can’t see the forest for the trees. 
Has the city made a good faith effort to play by the rules? 
ROSENELLO: The DEP has not offered a single constructive idea about our beachfront in my 10 years as mayor. They have not contributed a dime to shore protection on our beachfront in 10 years. This isn’t my opinion; these are the facts. They have figured out a way to get a dredge for every other community in the State of New Jersey, the tried-and-true, tested method of shore protection. They decided to use North Wildwood as a guinea pig with a new type of project that they haven’t been able to construct. And instead of admitting their mistake, instead of doing a hydraulic dredge project to protect North Wildwood in the interim, they’ve just stuck their head in the ground.
Is the novel construction method planned for the Five Mile Dune Project, using sand from Wildwood and Wildwood Crest to build the beach and dune instead of an offshore location, really what caused the delays, or should you have focused more in the past on getting Wildwood and Lower Township to sign their state aid agreements, which would have advanced the project faster? 
ROSENELLO: That’s the DEP’s job. Clearly, they are responsible for securing the real estate agreements to do that project. That’s number one. That’s their job. And they failed to do it for 10 years. Number two, we don’t know if the logistics of this project are going to work because it’s never been done before. When a contractor is out there trying to do this, then we’re going to find out. In the meantime, when you see the destruction that is happening, when you see the erosion, any rational, reasonable person would say we need a temporary plan to get us to this big project. And that plan isn’t for the DEP to say, good luck, North Wildwood. We’re not going to lift a finger to help you. We’re going to do absolutely nothing to fulfill our responsibility. All we’re going to do is look over your shoulder and critique you as you do our job. 
Have you ever received an explanation from the DEP on their lack of action in North Wildwood and the Wildwoods? 
ROSENELLO: No. The only thing they’ve ever said is, ‘Oh, well, there’s this federal project.’ OK, there’s a federal project that you are responsible for obtaining the real estate on, that you’ve wasted 10 years and didn’t obtain the real estate on. That’s not really an answer.  
Why do you think the DEP objected to allowing a judge to hear the evidence and determine if an emergency authorization for a bulkhead extension is necessary in the context of the larger dispute between the city and the regulator? 
ROSENELLO: I can’t answer for them. I can tell you that’s exactly what North Wildwood’s intention is here. North Wildwood’s intention is to litigate every piece of this in front of a judge, as high as we can go. If that means going to the New Jersey Supreme Court to decide whether or not the DEP did their job, followed the law, treated all the towns equally and fulfilled their obligations, that’s where this may end up. But certainly, it can’t be the DEP acting as judge, jury, and executioner, which is what they like to do and what they’re used to doing. They’re not used to people taking them into court. They’re going to fight to protect their bureaucratic ground, which is what bureaucracies do. 
Do you still believe a bulkhead is absolutely necessary, given the Five Mile Dune Project, a long-term solution, is now something more realistic to look forward to in the wake of Wildwood and Lower Township signing their state aid agreements? 
ROSENELLO: The Army Corps project will take place between 18 and 24 months after all the real estate has been acquired. The real estate isn’t acquired until all the private property owners have signed an easement. I think there’s a very high likelihood that the private property owners are going to fight this in court. The DEP, hopefully, eventually will win that. But that’s not going to happen overnight. 
Have you looked at the situation in Margate, where a dune project was fought and the state obtained the necessary easements using eminent domain and litigated it later?  
ROSENELLO: Let’s say this project is two years out. Let’s say in the spring of 2025 – which is the absolute earliest they’re predicting – they’re building this project. So, two things: If you get even a minor hurricane churning offshore in the next two years, we’re losing our Beach Patrol building and, most likely, we are losing part of the city’s sewer infrastructure. You’re talking millions and millions of dollars in damages. Plus, if you don’t have a lifeguard tent, how do you guard your beaches in the summer? That’s number one.
Number two, this project is an untested project. We have no idea how durable this project is going to be when they build it. No idea because they’ve never done it before in New Jersey. I don’t know that they’ve ever done it to this scale anywhere. So, this is a completely untested project. You’ve got a completely exposed area from 12th to 16th streets. You have at least two years before there’s any possibility of a comprehensive project and the project that is coming in two years is untested. Would any rational person just leave themselves unprotected for the next two years under those circumstances? My answer is no. 
Would the city really be leaving itself unprotected if it compromised and did one of the alternative projects that the DEP has recommended, like trucking in sand to reinforce the existing dune? 
ROSENELLO: Our engineers have calculated every one of their alternatives, and every one of their alternatives is completely and utterly impractical. The volume of sand, the number of trucks, the amount of sand you would need to truck in, it’s physically impossible to accomplish. Our normal annual back passing project was about 350,000 cubic yards. We can’t get around the piers. With the street trucks, you’re talking tens of thousands of loads of trucks. As fast as you put it down, by the time you get to the end, you’d have to start over. It wouldn’t be there anymore. And our engineer has certified all this. You either need to dump 500,000 cubic yards of sand quickly from an offshore dredge or you need to build a bulkhead. Those are the only two options. 
Is it true that the city really can’t get trucks around the piers most times of day? 
ROSENELLO: I was down there last Tuesday, two hours after high tide, and you couldn’t drive a truck around there yet. It looked like maybe by three hours after high tide you’d probably be able to. So, what happens if that window happens from 11 p.m. until 5 a.m., which it will? Every couple of days it’s going to be in the middle of the night. 
What’s stopping the city from running the trucks in the middle of the night? 
ROSENELLO: First of all, it’s a safety hazard. Now, you’re running these giant, earth-moving trucks down the dark beach. That’s number one. That’s a safety hazard. Number two, what do you think that does to the project costs? It’s a completely impractical solution. And then, every time you have the slightest elevated tide, which is a full moon, a wind, a storm, now you’re limited even more. When we could run the trucks all day, every day in front of the piers, that project took us five months. It still wasn’t enough. Trying to do it around the tides, that project would take a year, and by the time you got the sand down there, you’d be losing it at the same rate. 
Is the city allowing an unsafe condition to exist with large sand cliffs while it attempts to win the bigger battle, or is there something more that can be done in the meantime while the bulkhead issue is being litigated to improve safety conditions? 
ROSENELLO: Our original EA (emergency authorization) asked for jersey barriers, regrading the dunes, and the steel bulkhead. DEP granted the jersey barriers. They denied regrading the dune and the steel bulkhead. They very easily could have denied the bulkhead and granted the regrading of the dunes, which they haven’t done twice. The record for liability for that dune couldn’t be any clearer and it leads right up to a desk in DEP. They’re absolutely risking public safety. God forbid, if somebody gets hurt or killed, they’re going to have lawyers flying in from the entire country lining up to sue them. 
What’s stopping the city from putting in the bulkhead without DEP authorization, given that the city has done just that in the past, other than that this time it would be in direct violation of a judge’s order? 
ROSENELLO: Exactly that. We are now in the judicial process. All we’ve ever asked for is an impartial judge to overlook this, to mediate between us and the DEP. And we have that right now. We respect the judicial process and we’re going to continue to follow it.