Surf City not yet in the clear

SURF CITY, N.J. - The Long Beach Island town once best known for its perfect seaside-resort name and famous yacht club can't seem to shake its newfound fame for beach bombs.

About once a week in Surf City, summer beachcombers who might have been happy to find an unusual seashell or a piece of driftwood instead come upon part of an unexploded World War I-era artillery shell.

The ordnance discoveries are so common that officials say they might have to close the beach again - as they did in the spring - to bring in machinery to sift out the munitions.

That wouldn't happen until after beach season. But the maddening prospect of another round of ordnance-clearing comes with a twist.

The Army Corps of Engineers, which managed the $71 million beach-replenishment project that deposited the explosives on the beach, is now talking about getting the state to share the costs for the work.

Mayor Leonard T. Connors considers that fighting words.

"If they're talking about getting any money out of Surf City to pay for their mistakes, they can forget about it," he said, adding that he would "protest vehemently."

Summer resident Anne Manning agreed.

The Army, she said, "should pay the price for their negligence, and not the taxpayers of Surf City."

"We've already lost enough revenue in rentals because of their initial negligence," she added.

Spokesman Khaalid Walls said the corps routinely asked state governments to contribute to its projects.

"That's protocol," he said. "All of our projects are cost-shared." He added that the Corps of Engineers hadn't yet discussed funding sources for its munition-removal work.

Surf City's beach was first closed in March after discarded munitions began surfacing in sand that had been pumped ashore during a project designed to rebuild beaches eroded by decades of storms. Searchers moved in with heavy equipment and removed more than 1,100 explosives, each about four inches in diameter and eight inches long.

The munitions contain fuses and boosters, Walls said, and were used as parts of artillery shells.

It's unlikely any of the explosives would detonate, but they are potentially extremely dangerous, said Keith Watson, the project manager for the corps.

An explosion, he said, "would clearly blow your arm off and throw shrapnel at high velocity up to 50 or 60 feet."

The military had dumped the explosives about 21/2 miles offshore decades ago, common practice at the time, Walls said. The corps unwittingly used the dumping ground as its "borrow site" for the sand.

Surf City beaches reopened Memorial Day weekend with new rules:

No metal detectors. No digging deeper than 12 inches into the sand. Signs instruct beachgoers to report anything suspicious to lifeguards.

This summer, an Army ordnance specialist has been stationed in Surf City full time, monitoring the beach and taking charge of each munition discovery.

More than a dozen munitions have been found since the beach reopened, the corps said.

"We knew there was a likelihood that additional items might show up," Watson said.

The next step in the ordnance search will come no sooner than the fall. The Corps of Engineers could sieve the entire beach with machinery or bring back the ground-penetrating metal-detection equipment that was used in the spring, Watson said.

"Everything's on the table at this point," Walls said.

The corps, the state Department of Environmental Protection, and Surf City officials will together decide the best time for the operation.

Connors said he was not sure that the beaches would need to be closed at all. And if they are, he said, the closure "will happen in the dead of winter."

If that's the case, few people will care, said Barbara Partridge, a manager at Surf City Bait & Tackle. She said that the spring closing had cost surf fishermen "some prime fishing time," but that few fished from the beach in winter.