2014 Annual Report - To the city of North Wildwood on the condition of the city beaches

This annual report presents the status of the beaches within the City of North Wildwood for 2014. Following Hurricane Sandy the focus in 2013 was on restoration of the Jersey shore, its beaches and dunes. Local, State and Federal efforts have helped shore communities devastated by the storm recover and rebuild. In North Wildwood those efforts included a beach nourishment maintenance project to restore the engineered project beaches. Over the course of the last four years there has been five Presidential disaster declarations made for New Jersey’s coast in response to three northeast storms and two hurricanes, starting with a strong northeaster November 11-13, 2009 to most recently Hurricane Sandy on October 29, 2012. Each of these presidential declarations has allowed the City to be eligible for FEMA reimbursement under Category “G” losses to an engineered beach project to share the cost of sand replacement following each storm event. Norfolk Dredging commenced beach nourishment efforts on June 12, 2013 and by July 2, 2013 had placed 150,530 cubic yards of sand in North Wildwood to restore the erosion caused by Sandy. In addition, natural recovery added to the placed sand totaling an amount of 283,285 cubic yards or 132,755 cubic yards of sand returned to the beach naturally above the volume placed during the restoration effort. The 2013-2014 fall/winter was generally without major events though there were ten moderate wind events (>40 knots) that impacted eastern Cape May County and resulted in property damages (NOAA, 2015). The event that occurred on and around October 10, 2013 lasted 72 hours and generated 40+ knot onshore winds. This was the initial event on the list of storms that occurred between October 2013 and April 2014. A calmer weather pattern returned in late spring/summer 2014