Margate Street Drainage & Outfall Pipe Beach Project Underway

Margate’s City Engineer reports that the street-end drainage & outfall pipe beach project is ready for lift-off. So-called ‘big pipes’ already arriving on the beach. This is part of the Army Corp of Engineers Outfall Pipe & Beach Drainage project, designed to alleviate flooding caused by poorly constructed beach dunes.

The contractor confirmed that all castings have been ordered. These are E-type, street-end drainage inlets. They’re ‘bike-safe’ too, meaning your bike tires won’t get stuck between the openings.

Margate city wide, beach drainage & outfall pipe project now starting.

Commissioners claim that beach work will stop by April 25. Well, that’s what’s being reported. Beach work will pause til after the summer season. We hope that’s a commitment the Army Corp & NJ DEP will live up to. These 2 agencies have a poor track record of living up to their promises, as seen by their actions in 2017.

According to the Army Corp of Engineers, five outfall pipes will be installed under the sand to take storm water from the street ends, to the ocean. The installation will start on the south end of Margate and proceed north towards Ventnor. Outfalls will be located at Vendome, Nassau, Kenyon, Franklin and Douglas Ave.

Margate Beachpatrol Chief Smallwood is concerned. Worries about getting handicapped or those with walking challenges, to the water’s edge. Will Margate need to rent a beach-transport vehicle for summer? City may need some kind of low-speed, beach buggy to transport those who have trouble walking over dunes and other beach obstacles like dunes, caused by Army Corp of Engineers beach work.

Will Blumberg call Dept of Environmental Protection / DEP’s David Rosenblatt to ask if he’ll pay for these needed vehicles?

Concerned Margate Citizen and seasoned gadfly, John Sewell, references the butt-ugly mountains of sand on our Margate beaches and the butt-ugly dune grasses that keep growing atop them.

Concerns of dune grass making the Margate dunes even taller. In AC & Ventnor, some dunes have grown to over 20 ft high. Dune Grass acts like a snow fence, trapping sand and growing the dune.

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