Mail Bag

More than just melting ice

Iam writing this in response to the story “Shored Up” in the August issue of WorkBoat by Bruce Buls.

It seems like I cannot pick up a newspaper, boating or marine trade magazine today without hearing about rising seawater or “SLR.” They all talk about the ice melting in the Polar regions. Now don’t get me wrong, I do agree with that problem. But we have another one and no one has addressed.

A few years ago, I attended an environment protection meeting on this matter. The meeting was organized by the state of New Jersey and the Army Corps of Engineers. Their answer to stop the ooding in my area, Barnegat Bay (Ocean County, N.J.), was to build a 10' seawall around the bay and put sea doors on the inlets. My question was if they were going to try this, how would they expect the people on waterfront properties to react? At that time people were ghting the raised dune regulations. I also pointed out that the sea doors would block the ow of storm water in the rivers and the water would back up into the towns.

The other thing the state did was to dredge channels and place the spoils into natural holes that were sh habitats. Sometimes I wonder about the engineers they hire.

Recently a local marina built in the 1960s dredged its basin back to a ve-to-six-foot depth. I was amazed at the amount of spoils/sand that was removed from this small marina. This got me to think what about other areas that were lled in by runoff from the land and wave action washing away the shoreline. I can say without a doubt that much of the land has washed away in my 40 years, lling in channels and creating sandbars on the bay. Let us not forget how much sand from inland was dumped on our beaches to be washed away by nor’easter storms.

Dredging channels to seaports are being done all along our coast. The spoils are generally loaded into hopper dredges or barges and dumped somewhere at sea. Basic math tells me that you are moving the problem from point A to B. We see the ooding in the Midwest and the brown oodwater carrying yards of soil into the rivers lling in our waterways. Test it yourself. Take a glass of water and ll it half way, then place some marbles in and the water rises with no additional water being added to the glass

Wouldn’t it make more sense to dredge the waterways and put the spoils back on higher land or create islands that once existed?

Capt. R.M. Silva

Toms River, N.J.

Booth 2519

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