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Ahoy again from Wildwood By-the-Sea where since last season the landscape has undergone major changes, both literally and politically.
One of the real pleasures on Five Mile Island is to ride along John F. Kennedy Boulevard in North Wildwood and take in the unparalleled ocean view, right? Forget about it. Gone, baby, gone.
What you see now are nothing but sand dunes, dunes with little wisps of grass planted like a bad hair weave, criss-crossed every block by fences like you see in a horse corral. It sucks in the extreme. You have to hike up these little Saharas to get a look at what used to be the open ocean, always there, always beautiful, always accessible to the sea-hungry eye.
And – guess what? – Dunesville doesn’t end where JFK Boulevard ends at 13th Street. Oh, no, you can’t see the ocean until 26th Street and by then it’s so far away that it’s not worth looking at. I’m so pissed. They’ve destroyed some of the seashore magic in the name of — what else — progress.
The way government is today, I thought the powers that be in North Wildwood, N.J. had put up these monstrosities mainly because they could. But in the interest of fair reporting, I e-mailed Patrick Rosenello, who is president of the City Council, and asked him what the idea was behind the dune project and who funded it?
“The Beach Replenishment Project was a cooperative project between the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection and the City of North Wildwood,” he said. “The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers also plays a role in that they set the national standards for beach replenishment. These standards include height of dunes, slope of beach, length of foreshore, etc.
“Over the past several years North Wildwood had the highest rate of beach loss anywhere in the United States, according to the Army Corps. At the rate it was being lost, we would have had significant damage and loss to public and private property, particularly south of 15th Street, if we had not taken action.”
Still, I always thought those beaches were fine, but what do I know compared to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers? I mean, after all, they were the outfit that built and maintained those great levees in New Orleans, the Crescent City that became City of the Lost after Katrina dealt with all that great engineering. Just watch “Treme.”
My personal feeling is all the projects on earth aren’t going to stand in nature’s way. The storms and the tides of the ocean are going to move more sand than the Army Corps of Engineers ever could and that beaches will come and go at the whim of nature. The big new dune between Second and Third streets has been whittled to almost nothing and my friend Dave the hot dog man will still be able to see the ocean. He’s about the only one on JFK who can.
Before I quit this mini-rant, I have to say that during the winter when they were blowing all that sand out of the inlet onto the beach, with a big dredge sitting out there like some sci-fi monster, I knew it was the end of an era at the beach. And it is.
The other big thing that happened in Wildwood over the winter was that Mayor Ernie Troiano and the other two commissioners there were recalled and a new mayor — Gary DeMarzo — was installed.
I can’t be really objective because Ernie is a friend, but let me say that the kiss of death for his administration was the skyrocketing taxes. When people get hit in the wallet, they respond loudly and harshly, and the whole recall process was a bare-knuckled, Philly-style, take-no-prisoners political war.
You can tell how the people down here are feeling by the “Spout Off” column in the Cape May County Herald newspaper, and the handwriting was on the wall right along.
What is strange about the whole thing to me is it didn’t even raise eyebrows anyplace else.
I saw Ernie at his dad’s viewing over the winter – Ernie Sr. was a totally stand-up guy — and he said with a small smile that he has more time on his hands now. Well, he’s putting it to good use. His cement company donated all the labor for the replica Vietnam Wall — the “Wall That Heals” – that was dedicated May 29 at Fox Park across from the Convention Center. Ernie was out there every day, setting cement and shoveling dirt.
He’s a good guy and was as good a mayor as he could be in these strange and restless and sometimes ruthless times. SPR
