Dredge at Cape May Inlet in early 1970s/Center for Coastal Research

Farrell

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GALLOWAY – Could cutting notches in the stone groins on either side of the Cape May Canal Inlet allow sand to flow from Wildwood to Cape May?

Wildwood’s beaches are growing so wide beachgoers would probably take a taxi from the Boardwalk to water’s edge if one were available. At the same time, Cape May must renourish its beaches that are starved for sand since the Cape May Inlet blocks a natural drift of sand.

At a Wed., Feb. 15 conference celebrating 25 years of New Jersey Coastal Studies at the Coastal Research Center at Stockton College, Director Stewart Farrell said cutting notches in groins has been done in a number of locations.

Jeffery Gebert, chief of the Coastal Planning Section of the Philadelphia District of the Army Corps of Engineers, said it has been done in Monmouth County and Long Beach Island.

“Making a lower area between the lower part of the groin and the part on the beach to allow sand pass through distributes sand more uniformly on that piece of shoreline rather than creating these big offsets in the individual beach cells,” said Farrell.

Steven Hafner, assistant director for Coastal Research Center, said modifications have been made to groin systems including making notches in them so that sand can travel along the shore in a natural flow. He said profiles of groins have been lowered as the beach builds up behind it, so the sand it can bypass it and move on to another beach.
Hafner said it reduce offset beaches and “pocket beach” formations.

He said in Indian River, the Army Corps installed an inlet bypassing system which pumps sand from the up drift beach through a pipeline to the down drift side of the inlet to compensate for the loss of the flow of sand.

Farrell said Wildwood was formerly called Holly Beach. South of Holly Beach was an area called Two Mile Island, named that in Benjamin Franklin’s time, he said.

“In between those two was a thing called Turtle Gut Inlet,” said Farrell. “It’s on Franklin’s 1756 map of Delaware Bay.”

He said Franklin ordered the mapping and did not handle it himself. In 1922, Turtle Gut Inlet closed as developers were seeking to obtain Two Mile Island to develop the land.
Farrell said a causeway was built from Holly Beach to Two Mile Island narrowing the channel of Turtle Gut Inlet with a bridge to the point where wave action stopped and sand closed the inlet.

“No more Turtle Gut Inlet, it disappeared,” he said.

In 1907, the U.S. Navy decided its oiler fleet base in Cape May needed a jetty at Cold Spring Inlet and built two, granite block jetties on either side of Cold Spring Inlet stretching 1,100 yards out to sea.

“So any sand coming south now from Two Mile and Holly Beach combined hits this jetty and that’s where it stops and doesn’t go a bit further,” said Farrell.

All the sand in the ebb tidal deposit or ebb tidal delta from Turtle Gut Inlet moves onto the shoreline of Holly Beach and Two Mile Island combined. Farrell said Wildwood has a problem that all the oceanfront owners are now a block away from the shoreline.

In the last 60 to 70 years, there have been at least four attempts to develop that block of dry back beach sand in the Wildwoods, he said. Owners of oceanfront property “fight it tooth, nail and claw,” he said, because their property values would drop.

Farrell said sand gets by inlets but does so in “big, wholesale chunks” that are related to storm activity. He said similar sand accumulation would take place in Ocean City and Longport if Great Egg Inlet were closed.
Groins began being constructed in about 1868 when the Absecon Lighthouse was threatened with falling into Absecon Inlet. Farrell said the lighthouse keeper determined the lighthouse could be protected with a series of post piles and brush out into the water. By 1878, there was a huge spit of land in front of the lighthouse.

Similar groins started to be constructed all over the coast based on the success of the Absecon Lighthouse, he said. The Absecon Inlet had shifted sharply to the northeast towards Brigantine and all the sand out front, moved in towards Atlantic City.
He said a lot of Ocean City evolved from inlet changes.