Help is coming for a Jersey Shore town that’s losing the man-vs-nature battle on its eroded beaches

NORTH WILDWOOD, N.J. (AP) — A long-running sandstorm at the Jersey Shore could soon come to an end as New Jersey will carry out an emergency beach replenishment project at one of the state’s most badly eroded beaches.

North Wildwood and the state have been fighting in court for years over measures the town has taken on its own to try to hold off the encroaching seas while waiting — in vain — for the same sort of replenishment projects that virtually the entire rest of the Jersey Shore has received.

It could still be another two years before the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection begin pumping sand onto North Wildwood’s critically eroded shores. In January, parts of the dunes reached only to the ankles of Mayor Patrick Rosenello.

But the mayor released a joint statement from the city and Gov. Phil Murphy late Thursday night saying both sides have agreed to an emergency project to pump sand ashore in the interim, to give North Wildwood protection from storm surges and flooding.

“The erosion in North Wildwood is shocking,” Murphy said Friday. “We could not let that stand. This is something that has been out there as an unresolved matter far too long.”

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