Poor Decisions Led to W. Wildwood’s Failed Bulkhead

To the Editor: 
Some in Cape May County experienced tidal flooding and damage from the Jan. 22 storm that exceeded the Sandy storm some three years ago. Some communities claimed to have fared better. No matter the story, all suffered damages and losses that they could not afford.
I am a life-long resident of West Wildwood. I have served many years as an elected public official at the county and local levels. I am very knowledgeable of how politics works.
That gets to the crux of this letter that is in response to a story reported in another weekly newspaper; an article that reported on Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Rep. Frank LoBiondo (R-2nd) who visited West Wildwood to survey the storm damage done to the bulkhead at the far west end of Glenwood Avenue here that failed during the recent Winter Storm Jonas.
Federal officials met with West Wildwood Mayor Christopher Fox at the site of the failed bulkhead. The article reported that the failed bulkhead “caused extensive flooding.”
Water peaked over residential bulkheads filling the island like a bath tub. The bulkhead in question did not give way until after the borough was totally flooded. West Wildwood often floods from tide waters that are much less severe than those created by Jonas. Having lived a lifetime in West Wildwood, I have witnessed more storm flooding here than I care to count.
More disturbing to me was that Mayor Fox told federal officials, as reported in the weekly newspaper, that the borough put a second bulkhead in front of the original bulkhead about 10 years ago, and both bulkheads failed.
There was no second bulkhead placed at the street end site that was destroyed by Jonas, as stated by Mayor Fox. He knows that to be true because he was mayor in 2002 when he approved the work to be done on that very bulkhead that was destroyed in the Jan. 22 storm.
The facts can be easily verified by an inspection of the presently damaged bulkhead site, the bulkhead failed as a result of self-inflicted damages done by the borough public works department at the direction of the Fox administration in the spring of 2002. Yes, the borough public works department purposely dismantled/weakened and destroyed about 60 feet of the now washed out bulkhead when they used chainsaws to saw the wooden bulkhead structure to ground level, including the sawed off pilings and removing the bulkhead sheathing. The remnants of pilings    and planking sawed down to the ground remain today at ground level and can be observed as a result of Jonas exposing those pilings and planks at the blowout adjacent to the playground area, abutting West Glenwood Avenue.
Before the borough could remove the remainder of that bulkhead structure in the spring of 2002, the State of New Jersey stopped the removal of the bulkhead and cited the borough for the work they were doing.
At that time, public works employees did a quick patch to fill the void (hole) where they had sawed through the bulkhead by placing fiberglass bulkhead sheets improperly with no support of pilings, superstructure or other timber to support the plastic. Borough workers then continued to place the thin fiberglass “skin” covering the front of the wooden bulkhead that remained at the street end. They failed to anchor the fiberglass skin sheets to anything or support the material to give it any structural value. There was no second bulkhead placed at the site of the bulkhead rupture as claimed by Mayor Fox!
Commissioners now beg for funds to fix the very problem they helped to create in 2002 by removing the structural bulkhead that was there. The Jan. 22 storm has now exposed this sawed off bulkhead that caused the patch they ordered to be placed there in 2002 that blew out and caused tens of thousands of dollars of damage to public and private property resulting from commissioners’ poor decisions.