By Sarah Fertsch
Staff Writer
Next time you’re lounging on the beach, watch the tides. Waves, small and gentle, push and pull sand up and back, rippling under your toes. It’s beautiful, it’s natural, but it’s also destructive.
More often than not that water will take more than it returns. And with climate change compounding nature’s systems, the ocean has grown greedier.
Erosion – the cycle of wind and waves pulling against the shoreline, sweeping away the sand with each bite – is a crisis in slow motion. Climate change means more severe storms, and those whipping winds of a hurricane are a beach’s worst enemy.
For the picturesque coastal enclaves of Atlantic and Cape May counties in New Jersey, the battle against erosion has intensified, leaving local communities grappling with the stark reality of disappearing shorelines. The combined forces of the natural erosion process and the amplified impacts of climate change have accelerated the loss of precious beachfront, threatening homes, businesses and vital infrastructure.
From popular resort towns like Atlantic City to charming seaside villages like Cape May, the effects of erosion are deeply felt, both economically and environmentally.
Most beachgoers won’t notice differences between seasons, unless they’re in North Wildwood. That community, unprotected and underfunded, has suffered due to recent flooding beyond dunes and into residential properties. It doesn’t help that the wheels of bureaucracy turn slowly, said North Wildwood Mayor Patrick Rosenello, whose city hasn’t received a beach “renourishment” since after Hurricane Sandy more than a decade ago.
“The Jersey Shore as we know it wouldn’t exist without renourishment projects,” said Rosenello. “If in Philadelphia, protective barriers and bulkheads along the Delaware collapsed and the city decided not to rebuild them, Front Street pretty soon is going to be underwater.”
In many cases, the problem isn’t funding – plenty of federal and state grants are up for grabs for these specific environmental projects. But small cities like Sea Isle City and Brigantine don’t have enough resources to deal with all the red tape. Committee meetings, procurement, implementation and approvals take years.
Typically it’s easier to get governmental support when there are dramatic events like hurricanes, but the chronic and ongoing erosion that happens each year doesn’t draw the same kind of headline attention.
Jon K. Miller, coastal processes specialist for the New Jersey Sea Grant Consortium, co-published research on “nuisance erosion” last fall. It’s a form of erosion that is analogous to “death by a thousand paper cuts,” Miller said. “This past winter is a good example where we didn’t necessarily have a Hurricane Sandy, but there’s a number of locations along the East Coast – North Wildwood and Atlantic City – that had some pretty dramatic impacts more from the buildup of erosion over the past several winters than one singular severe storm.”
As long as there is a perpetual dance of filling in beaches only to have them eroded away, and people continuing to develop along the shoreline, researchers say New Jersey will need to properly fund and coordinate its beach renourishment projects.
What does this mean for the average beachgoer? No big changes for most folks this summer. But for residents and visitors alike, the implications of unchecked erosion are cause for concern in the long term. Beyond the immediate threat to property and infrastructure, beach erosion jeopardizes the very essence of these vibrant seaside communities by diminishing the thing people love most about being at the shore.
As erosion continues to reshape the Jersey Shore, collaborative action and innovative solutions are needed to preserve and protect our cherished coastal communities.
