State experts rebut Margate's challenge to dune plan
ATLANTIC CITY - Expert witnesses for the state, testifying in favor of building a dune system that Margate opposes, told a court Friday that the plan is based on current technologies and data.
ATLANTIC CITY - Expert witnesses for the state, testifying in favor of building a dune system that Margate opposes, told a court Friday that the plan is based on current technologies and data.
They contradicted two experts for Margate who argued Thursday that state and federal officials were relying on stale data and old modeling to reach their conclusion.
Margate filed suit against the state to prevent it from using eminent domain to seize 87 city-owned beach lots and proceed with a plan by the Christie administration to build dunes along the entire 127-mile New Jersey shoreline.
Residents of the town have voted twice in referendums against approving any dune project on their beachfront.
In its suit, Margate contends that the state and the Army Corps of Engineers improperly relied on 20-year-old data and out-of-date coastal models to justify the beachfront dune project. The Atlantic County beach town is one of three along the coast refusing to accept what it calls a "one-size-fits-all" dune plan.
Margate officials say their town would instead benefit from an overhaul of its system of bulkheads and berms. Berms are sections of beach that are elevated from the waterline landward to the bulkhead. The bulkhead is a barrier of pilings and timbers between the sand and private properties or public infrastructure.
During the first day of testimony Thursday before Superior Court Judge Julio Mendez, Margate's attorney, Thomas Biemer, said the Army Corps had ignored 20 years of data from coastal storms - including Hurricane Sandy - that he said show Margate's bulkheads performed adequately in protecting the town from erosion and flooding.
But experts for the state said Friday that the Army Corps, as long ago as the 1990s, had considered using bulkheads in Margate but had concluded that the method was far less cost-effective and not as efficient at staving off the effects of coastal storms, flooding, and natural beach erosion.
Four coastal engineers from the Army Corps of Engineers and a Stockton University coastal researcher testified for the state Friday that the data used to create the dune plan for Margate and its neighboring towns are in fact "current and reliable."
The state is expected to present three more witnesses Monday before closing statements by the sides.
It was unclear when Mendez would issue his ruling, but if the judge decides the science is sound, the Army Corps would be allowed to complete a project that has also included beach replenishment and dune building on the other Absecon Island towns of Atlantic City, Ventnor, and Longport.
Throughout the daylong hearing Friday, lawyers questioned witnesses on the finer points of how such projects are determined and engineered, and whether the data collected within the reports - some stacked more than a foot high when presented in printed format in court on Friday - were accurate.
"I believe the data we have used provides an accurate assessment of storm impacts on the beaches over the past 20 years up until Sandy," said Randall Wise, an Army Corps coastal engineer and its North American Division regional technology specialist.
Wise explained how data sets collected from sites up and down the coast before and after various storms since the 1980s have allowed the Army Corps and others to have a full picture of storm impacts and erosion.
Stewart Farrell, director of Stockton's Coastal Research Center, verified that photographs and survey documents presented as evidence at the hearing were accurate.
Farrell testified that photographs and surveys made by his agency immediately after Sandy struck in October 2012 showed significant erosion and sand "over-wash" from the beaches along oceanfront bulkheads onto the streets and yards along sections of Margate's 1.6-mile strand.
"These show how the beach absorbed the impact of the storm," Farrell said.
Post-Sandy, Gov. Christie pledged to build dunes the length of the Atlantic coastline. The governor has called residents of Margate and two other coastal towns - Point Pleasant and Bay Head - "selfish" for eschewing dunes.
Margate contends that its bulkheads, which line the beachfront, have adequately protected private property and public infrastructure for more than a century, and that most of the damage from any storms in the town has been the result of flooding from the bay side of the municipality.
Coastal engineers say that without Margate's participation in the dune project, the towns on either side of it - Ventnor to the north and Longport to the south - would be left vulnerable by a noncontiguous dune line.
"The effect of not constructing the project is that Margate is vulnerable to substantial damage moving forward and places Ventnor more at risk . . . as well as Longport. The risk is higher for Longport than anywhere else along Absecon Island and will only increase through the years," said Keith Watson, an Army Corps coastal engineer and manager for the Absecon Island project.
609-652-8382
@JacquelineUrgo