Shore towns scramble to fortify dunes decimated by blizzard

State Environmental Protection Commissioner Bob Martin said the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is now amenable to doing beach replenishment work piecemeal instead of on a contiguous basis while the state continues to fight in court with oceanfront homeowners who have refused to sign over the easements needed for the project. Watch video

Jersey Shore towns recovering from a crippling blizzard and nor'easter are rushing to dump sand back on the beach to shore up their coastline as state officials vowed to speed up a stalled beach replenishment project.

That was the scene Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno and state Environmental Protection Commissioner Bob Martin met on Monday on the first half of their four-stop tour to assess the damage at the Shore from Saturday's storm. 

Martin said the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is now amenable to doing beach replenishment work piecemeal instead of on a contiguous basis while the state continues to fight in court with oceanfront homeowners who have refused to sign over the easements needed for the project.

""We started talking about options going forward and seeing if there's an opportunity for us to...start some segment of (these) beaches in the short term and then build on it from there," Martin said.

However, he said, the state would still need to obtain a few more easements before the Army Corps would start the work.

Beach erosion a 'concern' on LBI, official says

At their first stop in the Ortley Beach section of Toms River, Mayor Thomas Kelaher said crews will start trucking in sand as soon as Tuesday to bolster a fragile shoreline made even more precarious after Saturday.

Over the past several months, the town had built a double-layer of dunes from existing sand as storm protection while the community, devastated by Hurricane Sandy in 2012, awaits federal beach replenishment.

"The dunes helped, but now we're back to the start," said Lou Amoruso, township public works director and assistant administrator. "We basically lost 95 percent of the main dune."

Besides wiping away those berms, Saturday's nor'easter destroyed wooden staircases leading to the beach and the ocean's waves came within a few feet of undermining the boardwalk.  Any breach of the remaining dune would have resulted in serious flooding, Kelaher said. 

In the Holgate section of Long Beach Township on Long Beach Island, Guadagno and Martin viewed a severely eroded beach that stopped just inches from an oceanfront home on Holgate Avenue.

"Another half hour (of the storm) and it would have been disastrous," said Long Beach Township Mayor Joseph Mancini. "Once again, all he temporary dunes that we built waiting for replenishment are gone."

As Guadagno and Martin toured the beach there, trucks arriving at the rate of 200 a day were busy dumping their loads of sand to rebuild the temporary dune.  The dune will be about a half-mile long and about 30 feet wide, Mancini said.

He said the DEP is paying for the first 600 truckloads -about $125,000 worth of sand, but the township has to pick up the rest of the tab of what is expected to be a half-million dollar project.