The $5 million state grant will add to Ocean City's efforts to protect and restore Shooting Island's fragile shoreline. (Photos courtesy of Ocean City)
Perched in the middle of the back bay not far from Ocean City is Shooting Island, an uninhabited, wildlife-rich land mass constantly under threat from erosion.
Following years of discussions, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection announced Wednesday – on Earth Day – that Ocean City will receive a $5 million state grant to restore the tidal marsh on Shooting Island in an innovative way.
The benefits of the project would be twofold: The island’s fragile wetlands would be restored, while Ocean City would gain another disposal site for the muddy sediment removed from the shallow back bays during its extensive, multiyear dredging program.
The dredge material will be spread in a thin layer to rebuild the marshes along the original outline of the approximately 150-acre island, located across the bay near Ocean City’s Riviera and Ocean Reef neighborhoods.
As it does each winter, the city dredges sediment from the bayfront lagoons and waterways to make them deeper for boating and other recreational activities in the summer months. Now, there will the added benefit of using Shooting Island as a disposal site for the sediment while building up its eroded shoreline.
The work will restore habitat and create “a living shoreline” to help protect plants and wildlife. It will rebuild an important buffer against coastal flooding, according to a city news release.
A satellite image shows Shooting Island, which is separated from Ocean City by the Intracoastal Waterway and extends roughly from 16th Street to 26th Street.Shooting Island has seen significant erosion of its shoreline, receding nearly 60 feet since 1978. Using a $2.6 million grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, the city constructed a rock sill in 2018 to restore the outline of the island. The new NJDEP grant will help create and stabilize wetlands and habitat, in part, by filling in the area behind the sill, the city said.
Shooting Island shields year-round neighborhoods from storm surge. Healthier wetlands will add to the defense, the city explained. The project most likely will use material dredged from nearby state waterways that include Carnival Bayou, Venetian Bayou and Ocean City Lagoon.
“In Ocean City, we're blessed to live in such a beautiful place. But we also have a special responsibility to take care of our marine environment and to be prepared for the future. Everybody wins with this grant: boaters, fishermen, birders, kayakers – anyone who enjoys using our bay waters,” Mayor Jay Gillian said in the release.
Gillian thanked the NJDEP, the city’s environmental consultant ACT Engineers, the city’s workers and everyone else involved with the Shooting Island program. He noted that Ocean City has received more than $15 million in grants since 2017 to maintain its bayside waters and wetlands.
Ocean City Business Administrator George Savastano traveled to Point Pleasant on Earth Day for the announcement of the Shooting Island funding award under the NJDEP’s Natural Climate Solutions Grant Program.
Shooting Island is a habitat for wildlife.
