A years-long battle to protect a stretch of New Jersey beaches from erosion has gone back to the drawing board, after talks on a $54 million plan collapsed.
The massive sand replenishment project would have seen sand moved around to bolster Five Mile Island beaches between the Hereford and Cape May inlets, encompassing North Wildwood, Wildwood, Wildwood Crest and the Diamond Beach section of Lower Township.
But talks stalled and the project was shelved, with funding moved elsewhere.
The scrapped scheme will raise fresh fears over the future of tourism to the beaches, which are popular with visitors and play an important role in the local economy.
North Wildwood in particular has lived in fear of being wiped out by the next big storm, and spent years embroiled in a legal dispute with the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection over the condition of its beaches and protective sand dunes.
Although it has been prone to severe erosion, North Wildwood has not yet gotten a full beach replenishment project from the state and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, due in part to funding delays and difficulty in obtaining easements from private property owners.
In December 2024, the North Wildwood City Council voted to accept a settlement with the NJDEP in which both parties agreed to drop their respective legal action, and hopes were high that a full restoration project would begin in 2025.
North Wildwood sits at the northern end of the barrier island. Due to the shape of the coastline and the movement of waves, sand moves southward along this stretch of the coast — pushing sand from North Wildwood onto the beaches of its southern neighbors, Wildwood and Wildwood Crest.
It has long fought a losing battle against this erosion, trucking in sand to try and replace what is being lost. In 2022, for instance, it brought in a large quantity of sand ahead of Memorial Day, only for much of it to immediately wash away again in a storm.
An initial recovery plan approved by Congress would have relied on moving sand between areas to balance out distribution so all towns had proper beaches.
But that plan has now stalled, with officials in both Wildwood and Wildwood Crest raising concerns about the impact of removing sand from their communities.
Wildwood Crest Mayor Don Cabrera told NJ Advance Media he was also worried about maintaining access for first responders.
“We don’t want our existing dunes, or any part of them, demolished for a higher dune,” said Cabrera, “and we don’t want to close off — I’ll call them gaps — because those are our emergency access points.”
Related concerns about beach length and dunes were shared by Wildwood, which often uses its beaches to host events with large crowds.
North Wildwood Mayor Salvatore Zampirri told NJ Advance Media he doubted whether neighboring towns would ever support building a dune to protect his community’s beach, if they feared it would come at the expense of their own.
He suggested that if necessary, North Wildwood would move ahead with a standalone restoration project provided state and federal officials were onboard.
For now, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has begun another round of talks with the NJDEP to revive a joint effort.
“It involves investigating alternate borrow sources for sand,” Army Corps spokesperson Stephen Rochette told NJ Advance Media. “We are in the early stages of this study and have begun initial coordination with the municipalities.”
Coastal issues in New Jersey are expected to get worse in the coming decades as the climate crisis pushes sea levels higher.
Many of these towns sit on flat barrier islands mere feet above sea level — and as the oceans rise over the next century, these areas will face an increased threat from flooding and even potentially inundation.
Multiple beach repair projects at the Jersey Shore were cancelled last year amid spending cuts by the Trump administration, and officials have pleaded for more federal help.
New Jersey has increasingly stepped into the breach and spent its own money on beach replenishment, reaching $50 million annually with its Shore Protection Fund.
