Mayor Jay Gillian: Several Paths to Dredge Bay and Lagoons

Dear Friends: Last evening, City Council awarded a contract to begin removing dredged materials from the site near Roosevelt Boulevard. The contractor will remove up to 50,000 cubic yards of material. This will allow us at a minimum to complete the dredging that was left unfinished in the last contract when the site reached its capacity. We are on several other parallel paths in regards to the dredging of our lagoons and other bay front areas including:

1. We continue to pursue approval to enlarge the undersized Route 52 Confined Disposal Facility (CDF) to significantly increase the capacity. This CDF is accessible by both trucks and barges and therefore would be easier to empty in the future to create additional capacity.
2. We continue to seek approval to use a $2.6 million grant we have been awarded from the United States Department of the Interior to use dredge materials to create and stabilize wetlands. We are pursuing the required permits to do this.
3. We have agreed to allow the State of New Jersey to remove dredge materials from two full city owned sites at the southern end of Ocean City. These sites have no practical use for Ocean City due to their distance from the lagoons. It is in Ocean City’s best interest to allow the state to do this to hopefully develop some sort of viable beneficial reuse for the material.
4. We are working in partnership with other coastal communities to pursue changes in various state and federal regulations that make dealing with this situation so difficult. Representatives of Stockton University are also involved in these efforts.
5. Last week, we met with several representatives of the NJDEP and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and had an opportunity to discuss these and other issues related to dredging. I am happy to report that these agencies are sympathetic to our needs.We are scheduling a follow-up meeting in Trenton in mid-March.

The objective remains to develop a viable long-term plan to maintain our entire bayfront. Have a great weekend! Warm regards, Jay A. Gillian Mayor