Upfront

Backbay Dredging

Ocean City utilizes shared services agreements to manage

Ocean City residents looked out over the basins where their boats once floated and instead saw them heeled over in the mud.

Like so many other coastal neighborhoods throughout New Jersey, Ocean City’s bayside waterways lacked deep water. For property owners who paid handsomely for backyard access,the shallow waters often were impassable to boat traffic. The city’s legendary Night in Venice boat parade–a tradition of more than 60 years held on the third weekend each July–had to change dates from year to year to find high tides. Paddle-boarders and swimmers had to time the tides to use the bay with some even having to be rescued after sinking hip-deep into the soft bottom. Bayfront property values decreased along with tourism dollars.

But the prospects for fixing the problem were as muddy as the bay itself. Ocean City faced a costly dilemma: The city had budgeted money to dredge, but finding a disposal site remained an even more expensive proposition, complicated by strict environmental regulations. Previous administrations failed to tackle the problem, and the city’s engineering department had a heavy load with other infrastructure projects on the island.

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