STONE HARBOR – Stone Harbor Borough Council heard a report March 15 from Mott MacDonald coastal consultant Douglas Gaffney.
Gaffney was recently hired to lead an effort on borough planning for the improvement of its beaches.
Erosion and rising seas have taken a toll on a number of borough beaches. Adding to the problem, the borough was unable to participate in a federal beach replenishment project in 2019.
Gaffney said he had identified a series of major issues with respect to the borough’s beachfront.
First, Gaffney told them what they already knew. The borough has been losing beachfront to natural wave action that moves sand from north to south. The size of the recreational beach area has been reduced, especially south of 103rd Street.
Gaffney, who once worked for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, noted that the Army Corps is “not very concerned” with recreational beach space. Their mission is shore protection, he added.
Gaffney then moved on to explain how the loss of dry beach area is having a negative effect on the borough’s dunes. In many of the southern end beaches, Gaffney noted, the high tide water line is approaching the “toe” of the dunes. This starts a process of eroding the stability of the protective dunes.
Gaffney said that sea level rise in the last 25 years alone has taken away about 14 feet of dry beach area across much of the borough. Unlike some other shore communities, like neighboring Avalon, Stone Harbor lacks any beach area where sand accretes, which means that the borough does not have a natural borrow area where sand could be harvested and trucked to areas hit by erosion.
The sand deposited at the Point is part of an environmentally protected resource and not available for back passing.
The two problems – a loss of dry beach area and the lack of beachfront from which sand could be harvested – means Stone Harbor is especially dependent on hydraulic replenishment efforts. In the past, these replenishments used borrowed sand from Hereford Inlet.
In 2016, a legal interpretation by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service barred the use of federal funds for sand mining from areas protected by the Coastal Barrier Resources Act (CBRA). This CBRA interpretation and a refusal from Fish and Wildlife to grant a waiver led to an awkward replenishment effort in 2016 and the borough beaches receiving no nourishment in 2019.
With a replenishment scheduled for spring 2023, the borough is anxious to ensure Stone Harbor beaches will be part of the federal project. Gaffney never mentioned the CBRA issue directly nor did he suggest any likely improvement in the legal ban on sand mining in Hereford Inlet.
Instead, he said conversations with the Army Corps indicate that the Corps will be looking for alternative borrow areas outside the CBRA limits as soon as the replenishment project is funded by Congress.
The problem, Gaffney admitted, is that locating and establishing a new borrow area is time-consuming and expensive. The extent of what can be done and the potential impact on cost will not be clear until the Congressional authorization is complete.
One potential effort that would make a long-term rather than near-term contribution to the borough’s available sand involves repair and modification of the jetties, or as Gaffney termed them, groins.
“The groins have not been maintained,” Gaffney said.
The result is that they are unable to do the job they were intended to do when constructed.
Mayor Judith Davies-Dunhour suggested that the repair of the jetties should be a state expense since they were first constructed by the state, some as early as the 1960s. Where the financial burden lies for reconstruction and ongoing maintenance of the jetties is likely to be debated.
Gaffney was talking about rebuilding the jetties, which are in a state of significant disrepair. He also suggested modifications that would allow them to capture more sand before it is lost to the southern movement caused by wave action.
“The benefits from this approach are long-term,” Gaffney advised.
Finally, Gaffney said the borough’s beaches are showing signs of disequilibrium.
“They no longer resemble the beach template established by the Army Corps,” he said.
Gaffney explained that the dunes have gained sand through wind motion and now provide strong protection, even as the borough is likely to see more dry sand area erosion. He was not optimistic that the Army Corps would see the disequilibrium as a major problem given the protective nature of the existing dunes.
Responding to a question, Gaffney talked about the potential beneficial use of specific types of dredge material on the beaches. Again, he was not speaking of an immediate use that could help resolve the borough’s present problems with the loss of dry area sand.
He also briefly touched on the concept of scraping sand from the dunes but said the practice would be a bad idea since wave motion would move much of that protective dune sand south before the slower wind motion could push it back into the dunes.
Bottom line: The borough has a problem with a “lack of sand” that is likely to intensify. Having identified the issues, Gaffney and the rest of the borough team must now return with an action plan. Perhaps most important, the borough needs to ensure it will receive the full benefit of the upcoming federal beach replenishment.
To contact Vince Conti, email vconti@cmcherald.com.
