CAPE MAY — Based on the amount of sewage sent to the county Municipal Utilities Authority in summer, it appears Ocean City is the number one tourist destination in Cape May County.

In addition, MUA flow figures show fewer visitors coming to the county on weekdays.

Charles Norkis, MUA executive director, explained the process of billing municipalities for the amount of sewage they send to the county facility plus their share of the utility’s debt service to Cape May City Council at a Tue., Jan. 18 meeting. He presented estimated flow figures for 2011 based on a six-year average.

Norkis said the MUA receives over 18 million gallons of wastewater a day from mid June to mid September. Of that, 4.7 million gallons per day will come from Ocean City, which is 26 percent of the county’s total sewage flow.

Wildwood sends 1.9 million gallons per day, Wildwood Crest: 2.1 million gallons, Cape May: 1.4 million gallons, Stone Harbor: just under 1 million gallons, Avalon: 1.6 million gallons, Sea Isle City: 1.9 million gallons and North Wildwood: 1.9 million gallons during the summer season.
Combing all the Wildwoods produces a figure of 5.9 million gallons per day, which would exceed Ocean City as a singular entity.

On a percentage basis, Ocean City makes up 26 percent of summer flow, Wildwood Crest at 11.56 percent, Wildwood at 10.77 percent, Sea Isle City makes up 10.58 percent, North Wildwood at 10.51 percent, Avalon at 9.31 percent, Cape May at 8.18 percent, and Stone Harbor at 4.71 percent.
Cape May Point, West Cape May and West Wildwood each come in with less than 1 percent of summer sewage flow.

All told, MUA estimates it will receive 4.5 billion gallons of sewage during the entire year from local municipalities, said Norkkis.

A year with an abundance of rain will produce higher sewage flow since there is some leakage of storm water into the sanitary sewer system, he said. Norkis said the summer of 2010 was an extremely dry year.

Cape May Mayor Edward J. Mahaney Jr. said there were 55 days during the peak summer period where the temperature exceeded 90 degrees.

“I think that brought more people to Cape May,” he said. “Our other economic indicators show there were more people here last year (2010) over the previous two years.”

Cape May’s summer sewage flow peaked in 2006 at 1.59 million gallons per day and has decreasing slightly since that time.

Norkis said summer sewage flows were dropping in all the towns. He said he suspected people were coming to the county more on weekends and less during the week.

“I see very large spikes in the weekends and then during the week during the summer, I don’t see the spikes that I used to have during the week,” said Norkis.

Mahaney said he concurred with the theory of fewer weekday visitors. He said Cape May previously considered 2.7 million gallons the peak day for the entire summer normally around July 4.
Cape May’s system can withstand 3.4 million gallons of sewage flow per day but 2.7 million gallons was always the peak.

“The last three or four years, we haven’t gone above 2.4 (million gallons) until this year (2010) we had a 2.7 again at the Fourth of July and another the first week in August,” said Mahaney.

He said economic indicators show tourism peaks on the weekend and “mid weeks are softer than they used to be five to 10 years ago.

“You can see it in the parking meter revenues, the number of cars in the streets, the number of beach tags we sell, very reliable indicators show that,” said the mayor.

Part of the cause may be persons buying homes for weekend use rather than for use as rental properties, which decreases the number of seasonal residents, said Mahaney.