Jersey Shore Magazine

THE NEW BEACHFRONT, continued from page 65 U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Jersey shore BEACHES j e r s e y s h o r e • F a l l / H o l i d a y 2 0 1 3 The CRAB at work taking survey readings of the new beachfront on Long Beach Island. 66 learned that certain sands are better at compacting and resisting erosion. Once that has been established, an approved offshore borrow zone is identified to supply sand to the site. The borrow site for Sea Bright is more than two miles off Sandy Hook. Immense hopper dredgers that can hold as much as 3,500 cubic yards of sand suck up the ocean floor, much like a massive vacuum cleaner, and filter it through grates to remove large objects. They dump the sand and water onto hoppers and, after pumping out the water to reduce weight and fuel costs, travel to the beach to be replenished. Water is then reintroduced to the sand, creating a slurry, and the new beach is pumped through thirty-inch pipes that terminate in a large basket with 3/4-inch openings to further reduce debris and screen for hazardous materials, like lost explosive ordinances, which continue to occasionally turn up. The beaches are surveyed both before and after this round-the-clock dredging to make sure the contractor has complied with the contracted amount of cubic yardage to be delivered. Surveys include those conducted by boat, on foot in the surf, and from the 35-foot platform of a Coastal Research Amphibious Buggy (CRAB), a Star Wars-looking amphibious three-wheeled vehicle. The new beachfront project plans for eight million cubic yards of sand to be delivered along the twenty-onemile coastline from Sandy Hook to the Manasquan Inlet. To conceptualize this mass of sand, envision a football field covered with sand piled 4,500 feet high—enough to bury the Empire State Building three times— and you'll get a sense of the amount sand being returned to the beach. Three restoration contracts are in various stages of being awarded and implemented in Monmouth County: Manasquan to Belmar, Avon-By-TheSea to Asbury Park, and Long Branch. In Ocean County, restoration projects have been authorized (but construction not yet begun) for the four- teen miles south of the Manasquan Inlet to Barnegat Inlet, and on Long Beach Island from Barnegat Light to Loveladies, and in North Beach and Ship Bottom, and from Brant Beach to Holgate. Parts of LBI (Surf City, Harvey Cedars, and Brant Beach) were restored this summer with three million cubic yards of sand. Dune crossovers and sand fencing are to be completed on these sites by October 2013. Our coastline, and some of the pleasure we get from it, will be forever altered with the hope of creating a safer environment for all. In time, no one will remember the difference. u Editor's Note: Near press time, it was reported that the installation of a sixteen-foot steel seawall covered by sand in Mantoloking had been approved by state and federal governments and was in the "final stages of preliminary development." This apparently is a state project and not one under the Army Corps of Engineers.

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