Sea Isle unveils wider beaches for summer season

Anthony Fani guessed that it had been 15 or 20 years since he last visited Sea Isle City and spent time on the beach.

The beaches seem different now than they were back in those days, he said.

“It seems like a bigger beach now than when I was a kid. When we were walking out here, she said, ‘Wow, this is a big beach,’” Fani said of his wife, Onnie Mancino.

They are right. 

Sea Isle’s beaches are much bigger these days thanks to a major replenishment project that has widened the shoreline with more than 900,000 cubic yards of fresh sand. The work has been completed just in time for the start of the peak summer tourism season.

Fani and Mancino, who live in Ewing, Mercer County, were enjoying the nicer beaches while relaxing near the water during a weeklong shore getaway that included stops in Sea Isle and Cape May.

   Dan Wendt and his son, Brady, right, play a friendly game of volleyball on the beach against his daughter, Lily, and family friend Nick Vojtasek.
  

Less than 100 yards away from Fani and Mancino, Dan Wendt was taking advantage of the bigger beach for a game of volleyball with his son, Brady, his daughter, Lily, and a family friend, Nick Vojtasek.

“It’s beautiful – 100 percent. We come down here every year and this time the beach is much wider,” said Wendt, who lives in Fleetwood, Pa., and has a summer home in Ocean View near Sea Isle.

Brady Wendt was the first one to notice the wider beaches. He called out to his dad while Wendt was inside a local shop.

“I told him to come out and take a look at the beaches. They look like they’re a lot wider. They’re a lot bigger,” Brady said.

Previously, sections of Sea Isle’s beaches and dunes had been severely eroded by coastal storms. The waves literally washed away huge amounts of sand. In some cases, the beaches were stripped of the top layer of powdery sand and the dunes were sheared away to create steep, cliff-like edges.

Now, a total of 932,000 cubic yards of new sand has been added to the shoreline from 

73rd Street to 94th Street in the south end of the island and from 29th Street to 53rd Street in the central part of town.

Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Co., the project’s contractor, used a barge-like dredge anchored offshore to collect fresh sand off the ocean floor and then pumped it onto the beaches through a network of massive pipes.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the federal agency overseeing the beach project, also had the contractor reconstruct Sea Isle’s depleted dunes from 84th Street to 86th Street and from 88th Street to 92nd Street by adding 10,654 cubic yards of sand.

    Some of the beach pathways are being restored as part of the project.
  

Steve Rochette, a spokesman for the Army Corps, said the project also included restoring the beach pathways from 85th Street to 91st Street and at 40th Street and 44th Street.

Late in the year, dune grass will be planted to help strengthen the reconstructed dunes. 

The dunes also were restored from 40th to 44th streets, Rochette said.

Wider beaches and reconstructed dunes will create an even larger barrier of sand to protect homes, businesses and other property during coastal storms. The project will also have the aesthetic value of making the beaches more attractive for the legions of tourists who visit Sea Isle in the summer.

“A lot of people have been saying how the beaches have gotten so much bigger and they’re so beautiful. We anticipate all of the visitors will be very happy seeing our big, beautiful beaches,” Sea Isle spokeswoman Katherine Custer said.

“As we always say, the beaches are our No. 1 attraction. It’s very important for us to have beautiful, healthy, clean beaches,” she added.

Sea Isle was the last of three towns — Ocean City and Strathmere were the other two — to have their storm-damaged beaches restored by the Army Corps of Engineers in partnership with the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection in a nearly $39.2 million project.

“There’s plenty of room for everybody to spread out,” Custer noted of Sea Isle’s wider beaches. “It’s all about having fun in the sun.”

    Construction equipment is being removed now that the project has been completed.