Nasty weather also sacked Jersey Shore beaches
ASBURY PARK, N.J. — Nasty weather didn't just ruin weekend plans, it sacked Jersey Shore beaches and put some of them off limits until spring.
Winds out of the northeast were regularly measured at 30 mph and raced past 50 mph at times, creating episodes of coastal flooding — in some instances even before high tide struck.
For miles along the coast, the storm left behind new cliffs of sand that last week were dunes and beaches. Beaches in Mantoloking and Brick are now closed because the drop-off in some spots is dangerous.
This was likely just the first taste of what could be a destructive next few months for Jersey Shore beaches. The Northeast Regional Climate Center is calling for a high number of strong nor’easters — more than 10 — on the East Coast through April.
The storm, which piled waves and water against the northern Ocean County beachfront for several days, showed once again that the area desperately needs a long-delayed beach replenishment project, municipal officials said.
Bob Martin, commissioner of the state Department of Environmental Protection, stood on the edge of a sand cliff Monday afternoon as frothy gray surf roared below him.
Martin and DEP officials spent the afternoon assessing the storm damage in places including Bay Head, Mantoloking, Ortley Beach and Normandy Beach, a stretch of northern Ocean County that he said has taken the most significant damage from last week’s storm.
“(Hurricane) Joaquin missed us, but this nor’easter was pretty major and caused some major damage,” he said at Fifth and Ocean avenues in Normandy Beach.
In Bay Head, the ocean had carved a 15-foot drop between the sand and surf, Martin said. In Mantoloking, the drop was between 12 and 15 feet.
Just a few blocks north of where Martin stood in Normandy Beach, the base of a sheet piling project designed to reinforce the sand lay exposed.
“That sheet piling project has done a great job for us,” he said. “This time of year, it’s always hard to keep sand (on the beach).”
Martin said oceanfront homeowners who refuse to sign property easements are preventing projects that would extend beaches and reinforce dunes, measures he said will protect homes, business and Route 35 all along this barrier island.
“It’s part of a whole chain of coastal protection,” he said. “The Army Corps (of Engineers) is ready to start immediately if we had those properties.”
DEP officials are fighting the easement holdouts in Superior Court, but even if the judges rule in favor of the department, it could be months before the first major beach replenishment projects begin. Martin said between 225 and 250 homeowners along Ocean County’s northern barrier island are refusing to sign easements.
Bob Mrozek, who sits on the board of directors for the Normandy Beach Improvement Association, said the easement lawsuits and state and federal funding delays were a "logjam" for coastal protection.
At Ocean and Fifth avenues, just blocks south of where the sheet piling project stopped, Toms River employees had dumped sand to reinforce the dunes through the storm, Mrozek said.
"They've come in with truckloads upon truckloads of sand," he said. "It's hundreds of thousands of dollars."
But without a wall to stabilize it, it too easily washes into the ocean, he said.