North Wildwood’s emergency bulkhead request rejected by state
The state said the dunes in North Wildwood were working as they should be, despite a recent breach from storms. The city said it will appeal the ruling.
An emergency request by North Wildwood to build a steel bulkhead to protect an area where the ocean breached the dunes was rejected Wednesday by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection.
DEP regulators were unmoved by North Wildwood’s plea for help after a recent storm accelerated the erosion of the dunes.
North Wildwood Mayor Patrick Rosenello had said the breach of the dunes around 13th and 14th Streets was putting the town’s infrastructure at risk, in particular its main sewer line.
Instead, the DEP said all is well.
“This seasonal sand exchange (landward/waterward) without breach into the street shows that the dune system still is functioning as non-structural natural shore protection for this area,” Colleen Keller, the assistant director of the Division of Land Resource Protection, wrote to city officials.
Rosenello said Thursday the city would be filing an emergency appeal of the ruling.
“In the meantime, every coastal storm, even a moderate coastal storm, will put the city at severe risk,” he said. “There’s no protection. What is there is in no way, shape or form a dune or shore protection. It is a flat area with scrub brush that wouldn’t stop a 1-foot wave.”
The state, however, determined there was “no threat to life, severe loss of property, or environmental degradation,” and therefore no need for an emergency bulkhead.
It noted that the state had approved a similar request in September 2023 for the installation of a bulkhead to protect the city’s Beach Patrol building at 15th Avenue, “an emergency condition ... confirmed due to the Beach Patrol building being situated as the most waterward structure on the beach, with little to no setback from the eastern limit of the dune.”
The state said the public infrastructure, including a concrete walkway and stormwater management system is located about 100 to 160 feet from the dunes, and were not at “significant risk of erosion/storm induced direct wave attack.”
The state and North Wildwood have been locked in legal battles over the city’s determination to build a bulkhead as it awaits further beach replenishment, not expected to begin until 2025.