North Woods, New Jersey (AP) After ten years of litigation and $42 million in fines, a resort community in New Jersey that has been terrified of being destroyed by the next major storm decided Tuesday to settle the dispute with the state over the state’s beaches and protective sand dunes.
The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection and the North Wildwood City Council reached a deal whereby the state will waive $12 million in fines imposed on the city for performing unapproved and potentially dangerous beach repair work.
The city will no longer sue the state for $30 million in sand it trucked in and put on its crumbling beaches, which are a favorite among tourists from the Philadelphia region.
Mayor Patrick Rosenello, a Republican who fiercely fought the state to ensure that his community received the same kind of beach replenishment project that almost the whole rest of the Jersey Shore has received, said, “It’s good to put this behind us and move forward.”
According to him, all we wanted was to be treated equally with everyone else.
North Wildwood has not yet received a complete beach replenishment project from the state and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, despite being vulnerable to severe erosion that recently reduced the protective sand dunes to the height of Rosenello’s knees. This is partly because of funding delays and the challenge of securing easements from private property owners.
After Democratic Governor Phil Murphy referred to the erosion in North Wildwood as frightening, the state Department of Transportation completed an interim replenishment project last summer. According to Rosenello, the work has held up nicely over the past few months.
Before the settlement goes into effect the following year, there will be a period for public feedback. According to Rosenello, the entire project is expected to start in North Wildwood in 2025.
Following Tuesday’s vote, a message requesting comment was not immediately answered by the DEP or the Army Corps.
The mayor stated that North Wildwood will pay $700,000 into a state water pollution control fund and contribute $1 million toward the final cost of the federal beach replenishment project once it is in the city, in addition to terminating the lawsuit.
The agreement also provides North Wildwood with a clear regulatory route to acquire the environmental licenses required to do additional beach protection projects, such as sea wall extension.
North Wildwood made emergency repairs on multiple times, including building an earlier bulkhead without state clearance. In 2023, the town received a warning from New Jersey’s environment protection commissioner, Shawn LaTourette, that continuing unapproved work might have more severe repercussions, such as the loss of future funding for beach protection.
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