By Michael Hill
Correspondent
Elaine Rosen came to see what the nor’easter did to the vanishing Ortley Beach in Toms River.
“It just makes me so sad. Every time I come here and I see this beach so small,” Rosen said. “[And getting smaller] every time.”
Louis Amoruso collected some debris that washed ashore. On top of a huge dune, public works crews scraped the last foot of wet sand along the water line, pushed it up against the existing dune to guard against the nor’easter.
“Well I think it helped because what it does is it creates friction and it buys us more time before it gets to the main dune,” Amoruso said.
On Monday, work crews will use thousands of tons of sand to build in some of these dunes out another six feet or so because they did some of that before the nor’easter, but the high tides this week washed a lot of that away.
In Bay Head, crews deliver more seven-ton boulders to finish the sand-covered rock wall started on the south end of the beach. You can see how that held up against the nor’easter.
When asked how Bay Head fared, Mayor William Curtis said, “I think pretty good. Monday, the storm was tremendous. I mean, there was no sand at all here. It went out to sea. But as you can see, now it’s starting to build back up.”
In Mantoloking, Chris Niebling of the Office of Emergency Management walks along and checks out the steel wall the nor’easter exposed.
When asked what the area would have looked like if the wall hadn’t been there, “Well there’s a reasonable chance we could’ve had wash over,” said Niebling.
When asked if he feels sometimes like he’s fighting a losing battle against nature, Amoruso said, “I don’t know that it’s a losing battle, but you really can’t beat nature. So kind of yes and no.”
“Not really. I think we’re gonna be all right. Years and years this has been here and we have homes on our beach in Bay Head that are well over 100 years old,” said Curtis.
“This is nothing more than just one long island along the Jersey Shore here that Mother Nature always tries to take back,” Niebling said.
“We used to have a huge beach, huge,” Rosen said.
All three towns are relying on projects to allow tourists to enjoy the beach, but primarily to protect their way of life.