Deep Despair Over Ocean City's Shallow Lagoons

Sean Barnes stands near the empty lot where his home once stood and looks out over the dry basin where his boat once floated.

Superstorm Sandy destroyed his house, but he's confident it will be rebuilt. He's not so sure about his lagoon.

Snug Harbor has no water at low tide, and the prospects for fixing it are as muddy as the lagoon itself.

Like so many other waterfront neighborhoods on Ocean City's bayside lagoons, Snug Harbor (between Eighth and Ninth streets) lacks deep water. For property owners who paid handsomely for backyard access, the shallow waters often are impassable to boat traffic.

Even with a commitment from the city administration to fund projects, bayside dredging faces obstacles — primarily the lack of approved sites to dump dredged material, but in Snug Harbor's case, the disappearance of a contractor who had already been hired.

Mayor Jay Gillian's administration included $250,000 for the 2013 dredging of two lagoons (Snug Harbor and Glen Cove) in a five-year capital plan released in December. City Council then voted in May to authorize the obtaining of easements to allow the dredging of Snug Harbor. The work was to be added to an existing contract for dredging of lagoons between 15th and 34th streets.

The contractor, Hydro-Marine Construction Company of Hainesport, NJ, did not complete work on that contract by the end of a permitting window on Dec. 31, 2012, and was scheduled to resume work to complete the job on July 1.

But the contractor was a no-show this summer. With parts of the bayside littered with pipeline left from the unfinished project, the project never restarted.

City officials are able to say little about a dispute that could end in litigation, and the contractor did not return calls made on Wednesday.

Hydro-Marine Construction was awarded a $1.8 million contract to complete the work. It remains unclear what recourse the city has to get the job done, withhold payment or come up with a backup plan. A permitting window will expire before the end of the year.

That leaves property owners like Barnes wondering what the bayside will look like next summer. He purchased his property in 1999 and has seen the benefits of past dredging projects. But he said construction of the new Ninth Street Bridge stirred up sediment that made the problem far worse than ever.

Snug Harbor owners are not alone in their frustration with the lack of dredging.

A group of more than 120 people showed up for a community meeting in June to come up with a strategy to push for regulatory relief at the state and federal levels for new spoils sites.

A small spoils site near the Route 52 causeway was to be used for the Snug Harbor project. But its limited capacity would require material to be trucked away before any new project could be considered.

The Ocean City Community Association is posting information related to the work of the new Ocean City Bay Dredging Committee. Look for updates at: http://www.occanj.org/bay.