Southern LBI Beach, Inlet Repairs Completed, State Says

LONG BEACH ISLAND, NJ - The upcoming summer season just got a lot easier for beachgoers and boaters.

That's because an $18.4 million project to rebuild storm-battered beaches and dunes in southern Long Beach Island and dredge the sand-choked Little Egg Inlet has been completed, according to the state Department of Environmental Protection.

“We are very pleased that the project has been completed in time for the upcoming shore tourism and boating season,” said David Rosenblatt, the DEP’s Assistant Commissioner for Engineering and Construction. “This is an important project that served the two-fold purpose of repairing beaches and dunes to better protect communities on southern Long Beach Island from storms while clearing shoals that forced the Coast Guard last year to declare Little Egg Inlet unsafe for boating traffic."

The contractor - Illinois-based Great Lakes Dredge and Dock Co., removed 700,000 cubic yards of sand from the inlet to create a channel that is 24 feet below mean high-tide. The sand that was dredged was used to repair beaches and dunes in Holgate and Long Beach Township. The DEP paid for the project using its Shore Protection Fund.

The sand was placed along beaches and on dunes from Ocean Street in Beach Haven and south through Long Beach Township, repairing areas that sustained erosion as the result of storms that occurred since the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers completed a $128 million beach and dune construction project that encompassed much of Long Beach Island.

The Coast Guard in March 2017 pulled the buoys marking the channel because the buildup of sand had was too dangerous for boaters. In some areas, the channel was six feet below mean sea level. Boaters were warned that use of the inlet would be at their own risk.

The inlet is one of the widest inlets in New Jersey and is heavily used by commercial and recreational fishing vessels, private boats and other craft that want to access Barnegat Bay, Great Bay and the Intracoastal Waterway.

The DEP will ask the Coast Guard to mark the boating channel for the inlet, a major thoroughfare for boat traffic between southern Long Beach Island and Brigantine that had never been previously dredged.

The DEP designed the project to have negligible-to-no impact on the nearby Holgate section of the Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge or migrations of fish. The DEP worked closely with the Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Marine Fisheries Service, the Army Corps of Engineers, and the DEP’s Division of Land Use Regulation and Division of Fish and Wildlife to ensure protection of natural resources.

Photo: Courtesy of New Jersey State Department of Environmental Protection