These Are the Closed Beaches in New Jersey – NBC New York

NEW YORK — Erosion from a late-spring storm will keep some New Jersey shore beaches from being ready for visitors over Memorial Day weekend, but overall, the Garden State shoreline spent the winter in good condition.

Scientists and local officials in some coastal cities say a storm earlier this month caused erosion that may not be repaired in time for the Memorial Day weekend crowds, but note that the vast majority of beaches of the New Jersey shore will be ready for the holiday weekend crowds.

Coastal cities like North Wildwood and Toms River are among the places where at least some of the beaches won’t be open in time for the unofficial start of the summer tourist season.

“In general, the state’s beaches are in good condition,” said Jon Miller, a coastal engineering expert at Stevens Institute of Technology. “There were some areas where we knew we would need more sand.”

The worst culprit was the so-called “Mother’s Day storm” in early May, in which the storm raged through numerous high-tide cycles and gobbled up chunks of beaches in many coastal cities. Even in towns that had wide beaches before the storm, there was some erosion, but some withstood the onslaught better than others.

“Critical narrow areas had some dune damage,” said Stewart Farrell, director of the Center for Coastal Research at Stockton University. “There were no breaches that I know of, but this was the worst event of the winter so far due to the duration of the northeasterly winds for at least four high tides.”

Nowhere is damage from the early May storm more visible than in North Wildwood. It set the city back by at least two weeks in its annual effort to haul tons of sand from a wide beach in neighboring Wildwood and dump it onto relatively narrow beaches on the northern edge of North Wildwood.

“We ran into a storm from the northeast that took away a good amount of sand that we had accumulated,” said North Wildwood Mayor Patrick Rosenello. “That set us back.”

On Tuesday, a veritable army of dump trucks raced back and forth between North Wildwood’s northern beaches and a wider beach in Wildwood, where they loaded up sand and dumped it onto the eroded beach. Trucks came and dumped sand every two minutes, and a bulldozer spread it near the water.

The exact number of beaches that won’t be ready for the holiday weekend keeps changing, but a post on the city’s website says the closures could vary between 2nd and 20th Streets. North Wildwood hopes to have them all open by mid-2020. June, the mayor said.

About a quarter of the Toms River beaches in its Ortley Beach section will not be ready for Memorial Day due to severe erosion, Mayor Maurice “Mo” Hill said. Ortley Beach is a common spot for erosion during storms and was among the hardest hit spots on the entire Jersey Shore during Superstorm Sandy in 2012.

Toms River anticipates spending between $200,000 and $250,000 on sand to put on Ortley’s beaches this year.

“This summer is going to be a challenge,” Hill said, adding that he expects the US Army Corps of Engineers to do a complementary beach replenishment project later this year or in 2023.

Stone Harbor also experienced erosion, but the city is working to replace the lost sand before the holiday weekend arrives. Officials did not respond to numerous requests for status updates on Wednesday.

Bay Head, which also experienced erosion that left sand at some entry points at a 45-degree angle, would likely not be able to open all of its beaches if it had chosen to start staffing them by Memorial Day weekend. But Bay Head’s beaches don’t officially open until June 18 and should be in good shape by then, Mayor William Curtis said.

Other erosion took place to varying degrees in Ocean City, Avalon, Harvey Cedars, Brigantine, and the Strathmere section of Upper Township.

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