New storm-protecting berm lasts just one storm

Two weeks after a storm wreaked havoc on the beach in Holgate, officials once again have to truck sand in to protect the oceanfront homes and the houses behind them. Watch video

HOLGATE -- It took only a couple days of storms to wash away week's worth of work to build a protective berm on Long Beach Island where successive storms have taken their toll on many beaches this winter, officials said on Wednesday.

In what literally has been a situation of shoveling sand against the tide, Long Beach Township Mayor Joseph Mancini said about two-thirds of the 1,000 truckloads of sand dumped onto the beach in Holgate two weeks ago got sucked out into the ocean since the weekend.

That's left the town once again in the position of ordering additional truckloads of sand now and worrying about how to pay for it later, he said.

"We will need more loads - it's a question of how much," Mancini said. "Then we chase the money."

N.J. wants feds to repair LBI beaches eroded by blizzard soon

Holgate, which was devastated during Hurricane Sandy in 2012, was scheduled to undergo a federal beach replenishment project this winter, but the contractor, Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Co., pulled out its equipment in December to handle projects in other parts of the country.

The replenishment now is scheduled to start in April or May, but local and state officials have criticized the company for leaving the area so vulnerable during the winter storm season.

A Jan. 23 blizzard and nor'easter badly damaged Holgate and 18 other beaches along the New Jersey coastline by reducing the elevation by as much as 8 feet in some locations and chopping protective dunes to within a few feet of some oceanfront homes.

After that storm, Long Beach Township ordered 1,250 truckloads of sand and 1,000 of those loads had been dumped before last week's successive storms washed most of it away.

By Monday, about half of the trucked-in sand had been washed away, said Bob Considine, a spokesman for the state Department of Environmental Protection. He said the department will help the township find a way to pay for the additional sand that will be needed to bolster the beach.

Mancini said a sustained northwest wind is keeping the ocean's breaking waves farther off shore, which will give work crews as early as Thursday the opportunity to push sand back onto the beach. That will also keep the beach wide enough for dump trucks to resume bringing loads of sand, he said.

He said he expects the town will have to order more sand, but won't know how much until it does an assessment on Thursday.

For now, the town has to use what it has sparingly.

"We're really doling it out slowly to make it count," Mancini said.