To Dredge or Not to Dredge? That is Not the Question.

STONE HARBOR – Scott Campbell, chairman of the board, Cape May County Chamber of Commerce presented a resolution Sept. 2 to Mayor Suzanne Walters and Borough Council in honor of the borough’s 100th anniversary.
When that bit of business was done, many residents in the crowd listened to two separate presentations on dredging. Lori Pettigrew, the regional (southern) superintendent of the N.J. Division of Fish and Wildlife (NJDFW) gave the first.
NJDFW Grant for Marsh Restoration (through dredging)
Pettigrew spoke about a project the NJDFW is working on with the Army Corps of Engineers, The Nature Conservancy and Green Trust Alliance. The NJDFW was awarded a $3.4 million grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation through the Hurricane Sandy Coastal Resiliency Competitive Grants Program for a project for the beneficial reuse of dredge material for marsh restoration. The project leverages state and federal dredging projects already planned to help restore salt marsh in shore communities. “This technique has been used successfully in other states,” Pettigrew said. “But this is the first time it is being used in New Jersey.”
The project goals are to ensure methods are cost effective, restore degraded marsh habitat, and provide flood and erosion buffering. “New Jersey salt marshes have been disappearing for the last century,” Pettigrew said. “For decades, we’ve been taking sediment and putting it in CDFs such as Site 103. When you take that sediment out of the ecosystem, it’s no longer available for the marshes to use. The marshes are experiencing more frequent flooding of longer durations and essentially, the salt marshes are drowning.”
Benefits for the project Pettigrew outlined include reusing future dredging sediment to help restore healthy marshes with natural growth and vegetation. “Healthy marshes increase ecosystem functions that benefit communities,” she said.
Pettigrew spoke of shoreline stabilization, which involves building a containment wall (hay bales, in some cases), and then taking the dredge material and pumping it behind that wall. She mentioned that the NJDF hopes to increase the two year grant they received to five years, as “one of the largest components of the grant is monitoring and evaluation. … We need to monitor flora/fauna, tides, and how quickly vegetation grows back. We want to make sure the project does what it is intended to do.”
Results of the projects success, Pettigrew stated, would be shown by increased buffering capacity against storm and flood damage, improved water quality, enhancement of wildlife and fish habitat, positive impact on local economies, and that the project itself could be a repeatable model for marsh restoration.
“Do we need permits for all of this? And how long would they take to obtain?” Council member Joan Kramar wanted to know.
“Yes,” Pettigrew answered. “Ninety days is a minimum to get the necessary permits for this, though you’re probably looking at, more likely, a year.”
Monica Chastin of the Army Corps of Engineers expanded on this saying, “Each project is different, depending on a host of different factors. But to actually get this to construction, when you’re asking about timeline, there are a lot of state regulations before you can get the project off the ground.”
Borough resident Dale Florio asked about the winter flounder limitation on the dredging season. “I don’t think there are any winter flounder anymore in this area,” Florio said. “Does that limitation still exist and if so, can we change it?”
“It is true that there are dredging restrictions,” Pettigrew said. “You cannot dredge from September 1 through December 31 because of winter flounder.”
“We’ll never get dredging done if it’s a September through December project,” Florio said.
“It is a federal restriction,” Walters added. “I attended a meeting in Cape May with the fisheries and they are looking into changing our area out of that winter flounder season. The council is fighting to get this new legislation that would take Cape May County out of it. And the congressman is aware of it too.”
Ocean and Coastal Consultants’ Dredge Management Plan
Matthew Dalon, the project manager for Ocean and Coastal Consultants, Inc. (OCC) gave a presentation on his company’s preliminary dredge material management plan for the borough.
“Dredging projects aren’t as simple as they used to be where you would just fill up, pump, and forget about it for the next five years,” Dalon said. He reported that, based on OCC’s study, they discovered there is about 325,000 cubic yards to dredge, including Stone Harbor lagoons, residential and commercial slips, state channels and the New Jersey Intra Coastal Waterway. In order to manage all that material, Dalon reported it would be done over the course of 10 years. But where do you store the dredge material?
Dalon presented different options for dredge material disposal, including open water (ocean), which he said was “not really an option worth pursuing as it is very difficult to obtain permits.” Open Water disposal options were highlighted in red, as they are the worst option, according to the report.
The cautionary disposal options, such as environmental restoration (like the NJDFW’s plan), highlighted in yellow, were marked as ‘beneficial use.’
Upland disposal such as CDFs and landfills “have been used before,” Dalon said. Upland disposal options were highlighted in green to show that these might be the best option for where to put dredge materials.
As this was a preliminary report, Ocean and Coastal Consultants will deliver a full Dredge Material Management Plan and report Sept. 19.
“Now do you have a list of available sites where we might be able to offload our dredge materials,” Kramar asked.
“We have a list of potential CDF sites,” Dalon answered.
“What recommendations will you be giving us on Sept. 19?” asked Council member Al Carusi. “At this point, do you have a recommended approach?”
“It’s a work in progress,” Dalon said and then reassured council the Sept. 19 report will include comprehensive dredging recommendations.
To contact Bryon Cahill, email bcahill@cmcherald.com.