Many high tides have risen and fallen since a group of boat owners in Stone Harbor realized something had to be done if they were to continue enjoying their pleasure craft. Silt, as yucky brownish-gray stuff is properly known, had clogged basins and channels of the resort’s back bays. As a result, those striking, sleek crafts spent more time on trailers or moored dockside than in the open water fishing or just cruising. That disturbed the chaps who had considerable sums invested therein, and who were deprived, by ignorant mounds of muck, of their guaranteed right to the pursuit of happiness.
No slackers they, it was decided they would take action to rectify the untenable situation.
One of the greatest assets some of those unfortunate land-locked mariners possessed was expendable cash. And imagine the mindset: They actually were willing to pool resources to help not only themselves but everyone else who navigated those filled waters. Wow!
Not being greedy, wanting to benefit others, and also aid themselves by way of being able to cast off all lines and leave the cares of the world behind, they formed an outfit fittingly known as the Stone Harbor Boaters Association.
They were a rather smart lot. Scouting about, they found a piece of flat marshland, just off Ocean Drive, between Stone Harbor and Grassy Sound in Middle Township that could be had for a reasonable price. So, without aid of government funds, they bought it. Imagine that, they pooled their bucks and took title to the acreage. But why? What was their design for that parcel of marsh grass and mud?
Before the word “spoils” was politically incorrect to define silt that clogs channels and basins, the boaters determined that spot would be a terrific place to allow the borough to place the dredge “materials” (ah, euphemisms, aren’t they delightful?) They would charge a very reasonable fee to their home borough, merely to defray expenses, not make a profit. It was almost too good to believe, but true.
Everyone would win. Muck would get relocated to the site, boats could ply the Intracoastal Waterway once again, and best of all, they could use those boats they had been itching to throttle up and again feel the fresh sea breeze in their faces.
It made a lot of sense to everybody in Stone Harbor. So, with a safe, nearby and most of all “legal” place to dump the “stuff,” Site 103 was born. Honestly I don’t know where the numerology originated. There was always a mystique about it, as if it was a secret landing zone for space aliens or their ilk.
Because I don’t want to get in a pile of smelly “material,” Site 103 is correctly defined as a “contained disposal facility,” or CDF for short.
Earlier this year, Borough Council took action to continue its annual lease agreement with the Stone Harbor Boaters Association, according to a story from March.
The pact called for an annual payment of $4,320. Also to be paid was $2,240 for expenses incurred by the boaters since inception of the lease. Not a bad price, since there are no other nearby CDFs that can take “material.”
Like a barrel, when enough raindrops fall, its limit was reached. So it is with Site 103. It is full, and still there is dredging to be done. Boaters are getting antsy.
The borough would love to find a useful purpose for the “material” that fills the site which resembles some Aztec or Mayan temple site elevated high above the floodplain for all the world to see. Once empty, more dredging could make more boaters happy. Let’s not get ahead of the tale.
It’s (the “material”) really good stuff. However, the DEP could claim “it’s from Missouri,” because it keeps repeating, in essence, “prove it.”
Since we all know money grows in orchards on money trees, a $165,000 state grant from the Department of Transportation, will pay for continued testing of the “material” by Ocean and Coastal Consultants, Inc., which recommended International Hydronics Corp. for the actual test work. Council passed a resolution Sept. 4 to that effect.
It might not look like a gold mine, but Site 103 is a moneymaker for someone, not the boaters. Because Site 103 is so unique, the DEP Office of Dredging and Sediment Technology (what did we do before it existed?) has become more Missouri like than ever. It needs more proof the mound is A-OK.
An April 23 letter from Borough Administrator Jill Gougher to DOT’s Office of Maritime Resources seeks the $165,000: “The sampling and testing requirements…as well as the level of daily coordination, is more detailed than what is normally required for a Sampling and Analysis Plan due to the unique nature of the Nummy Island (Site 103) project. There are no previous projects that are of a similar nature than can be used as precedence and, therefore, the DEP Office of Dredging and Sediment Technology has placed strict sampling and testing requirements on the project.”
Results of those tests “will give us the ability to identify a range of beneficial uses for which the material excavated from the CDF can be utilized, as well as forming a base of analytical information for NJDEP,” Gougher wrote.
Grants to test and retest the site total roughly $515,000. Such grants, cited Mayor Suzanne Walters at the meeting, “Show the commitment on the part of the Department of Transportation.” So there must still be a beneficial use for that stuff from Site 103. Have any ideas? Council would love to hear them.
At the Sept. 4 meeting, an anxious boater quizzed the mayor on the back bay dredging situation. The mayor replied that more testing was needed at Site 103.
Assuming all goes well, he offered, what was the schedule for work to begin? (He must not be from New Jersey to ask that.)
There is no schedule, the mayor answered. It is yet to be determined where the “material” will go. “In flux” was her term.
Stated Councilwoman Joselyn O. Rich, Natural Resources Committee chair, “Dredging is one of the most frustrating things you can deal with.”
Meanwhile tides rise and fall, lifting boats and hopes, then falling in six hours.
Sea Isle City – I would like to let everyone know that the fire chief salary also includes 4% raises in the next four years, while they offered public works and everybody else much less.
