South End Beach Project Still on Schedule for Fall

Sand berm at 57th Street in Ocean City in March 2014. Ocean City Business Administrator Mike Dattilo reported to City Council on Thursday that a  replenishment project for Ocean City's southern beaches is still on schedule for late summer (after Labor Day) or early fall. Dattilo said representatives of the federal Army Corps of Engineers, state Department of Environmental Protection and cities of Ocean City, Upper Township (Strathmere) and Sea Isle City met last week, and officials see no impediments. Funding and permits are both in place. "It appears, in plain English, like it will happen," Dattilo said. The Army Corps has approval to complete a multi-town project (with Strathmere and Sea Isle City) to rebuild eroded beaches and restore dunes decimated by Superstorm Sandy in October 2012. The entire project is expected to exceed $100 million, and the federal government will pay 100 percent as part of Sandy disaster relief. The project will end a long waiting game for property owners at the south end, where the ocean met the bay during Sandy and flattened protective dunes. Since then, the city used sand recovered from streets and trucked in to rebuild a sand berm between 49th and 59th streets. Dattilo said the beaches are currently "in fairly good shape" and the city continues to monitor it daily. He said when the early spring storm season calms down, the city will harvest sand from other beaches to elevate and widen the narrowest beaches near 57th Street. Later in the meeting, Councilman Scott Ping, himself a south-end resident, said he walked the beach at a mid-tide recently and said he's seen it both wider and narrower over the years. He said he recently saw an email in which a real estate agent complained about the beaches' effect on summer tourism. "For anybody to be canceling their reservations for the summer is beyond me," Ping said.