TOMS RIVER, NJ – Toms River Mayor Maurice “Mo” Hill has just three months left in office, but today called for a new beach erosion tax to help the township pay for the annual severe beach erosion in Ortley Beach.
Hill said the township has been using funds allocated for snow removal to replenish the beach each season, but that’s because there hasn’t been any snow. Hill says if the town has to use up that money in the winter, there won’t be any left in the spring.
Instead, he’s calling for a new beach erosion tax that will raise taxes for all residents, even those furthest removed from the beach to pay for the cost of annual and sometimes twice-per-year replenishments.
Hill said in an interview with News 12 that in 2022, the beach had 12-foot cliffs after a winter storm, making it inaccessible.
Storms have taken an immense toll on Ortley Beach in the years after Hurricane Sandy and beach replenishment. Some scientists believe the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is to blame for the erosion caused by the disturbance of the natural topography of the ocean floor.
Others suspect that what is happening at Ortley Beach is nature’s way of reclaiming what was taken. The area was once an inlet named Cranberry Inlet.
That inlet was created around 1750 and was mapped out in 1755. That inlet eventually closed and an attempt to build an inlet near Bay Head in the 1820s also failed.
In 1847, an attempt to recreate the Cranberry Inlet was completed, but that too quickly filled in with sand. In 1925, the Point Pleasant Canal opened, offering a northern entry point into the Barnegat Bay.
As for the cost of annual beach replenishment, Hill says the town needs a new tax for that.
“We haven’t budgeted for it, but we’ve been fortunate not to have a lot of snowfall. We do have a snow emergency fund and we’ve been using those funds,” Hill said in the interview. “That’s been ongoing for the last couple of years I would recommend going forward that in the future that we just build it into the budget because it’s going to happen.”