On Tuesday, August 27th, FEMA issued the Preliminary Work Maps for Cape May County. This long-awaited release of official flood mapping replaces the Advisory Base Flood Maps and delineates new flood zones and elevations. Cape May County’s Emergency Management Coordinator Martin Pagliughi indicated that that the new maps “reduced the acreage in the V-Zones by about 80 percent.”  He stated that, “Now it’s going to take some time for individual municipalities to analyze and get into the detail and look at the accuracy of where the lines are.”

With Hurricane Sandy’s landfall and damage still at the forefront the Jersey shore’s recovery efforts, it is essential that property owners review the new mapping and designations specific to their lands and understand the implications of the assigned zones and elevations.  The Lomax Consulting Group has been tracking updates to and the release of FEMA’s Preliminary Work Maps on behalf of its clients, and is now engaged in reviewing impacts and implications resulting from these mapping changes.

These maps are preliminary, and they will now go through a period during which municipalities and the public can review and comment on the delineated boundaries and designations.  As these preliminary maps are now the prevailing flood designations recognized by NJDEP, there is a window of opportunity for property owners to act.  The Lomax Consulting Group stands ready to assist its clients in analyzing the flood zones and providing input through the public process.

To learn more about how this impacts your property or development, contact The Lomax Consulting Group, please call 609-465-6700 or go to our website at http://www.lomaxconsulting.com.

Additional information can be found at the following links:

http://www.region2coastal.com/bestdata

Cape May County Herald, Real Estate
Mon, 06/14/2010

Kristin Wildman, left, director of Technical Services at The Lomax Consulting Group and Peter Lomax, president of The Lomax Consulting Group examine plans for urban redevelopment and parking in the Wildwoods

WILDWOOD — For many years the parking requirements under the N.J. Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP) Coastal Area Facility Review Act (CAFRA) regulations have made coastal redevelopment of hotels a difficult venture. These standards required as many as four parking spaces for each hotel unit – an overburden strangling the economic vitality of hotel redevelopment.

The Lomax Consulting Group, a local consulting firm, teamed with municipalities, local hotel owners, and the construction trades to establish reasonable design standards that balance parking needs with parking demands based on hotel unit size. Wildwood Crest Mayor Carl Groon indicated that he had approached the NJDEP to provide a more realistic parking standard that would foster urban redevelopment in the Wildwoods and to encourage hotels to replace room stock lost to condominium conversions.

Concurrently, the City of Wildwood went through a master planning process that identified limited zones in the community that encouraged redevelopment with hotels that would support the Wildwoods Convention Center, a $68 million facility designed to host and expand local tourism.

Peter Lomax, president of The Lomax Consulting Group, noted that, “The rule overhaul is a watershed moment for advancing redevelopment in the coastal zone. Having worked for decades on key economic development projects, like the Wildwoods Convention Center, a reasonable parking requirement puts in place the keystone for economic vitality – year-round rooms at premier resorts along our local coastline.”

Studies indicate that hotel units of less then 650 square feet require only one parking space. The CAFRA rule amendment adopted June 7, 2010, clarifies and confirms revised parking requirements. The old rule discouraged new hotel investment because of the excessive cost of constructing parking spaces.

Facilities such as the Convention Center will thrive, better able to book larger and shoulder season conventions with nearby hotels that can accommodate larger groups and conventioneers that prefer to stay together.

Lomax stated that, “Private investment is needed to build the number and quality of rooms to be compe******ive with similar facilities along the Atlantic Coast.”

In recent years Wildwood has granted Preliminary Site Plan approval to nine hotels, but only two have successfully obtained CAFRA approvals to date. Kristin Wildman, a project manager for The Lomax Consulting Group stated, “Our firm has worked diligently with local stakeholders and developers to obtain CAFRA approvals for new hotels in the community.”

The first hotel to receive CAFRA approval was the Starlight Resort Hotel, located at Poplar and Ocean avenues, owned by the Bill Morey Family. The second hotel to receive CAFRA approval was the Martinique Resort, located at Oak and Ocean avenues and owned by Martinique Resorts, LLC. Bill Morey, Jr. and William Callahan, spokesmen for their respective hotels, indicated that they are delighted with the State’s decision.

Two additional hotels, Jerry Kretchman’s Grandview Hotel and Wally Lerro and Paul Chiolo’s Oceanic Hotel, were held in limbo for more then a year by the weighty parking standards, but now are positioned to move ahead and finalize their hotel plans.

The team coordinated by The Lomax Consulting Group and aided by the bipartisan support of Sen. Jeff Van Drew and Assemblyman Amodeo, approached the governor’s Red Tape Review Panel for assistance when the rule amendment became bogged down in the NJDEP rule-making process.

Together with governor’s office and NJDEP Commissioner, Van Drew worked to see this rule change through to reality. The N.J. Regional Council of Carpenters and local tourism leaders voiced their support for the more reasonable parking requirement, which is now adopted as part of the Coastal Zone Management Rules.

This design standard now allows for one parking space for hotel units containing less than 650 square feet within one half mile of the beach. Otherwise, this rule defers to standard municipal parking requirements consistent with their local zoning. The rule amendment in its full content can be viewed on the NJDEP website (www.state.nj.us/dep/rules/adoptions.html).

For more information, contact The Lomax Consulting Group by visiting the company’s website at www.lomaxconsulting.com. For over 35 years, The Lomax Consulting Group has specialized in environmental and land use consulting, offering technical expertise and innovative solutions through sustainable practices.

Written by Carole Mattessich
Wednesday, 09 June 2010

WILDWOOD CREST – While other resort towns spend millions to pump sand on eroded beaches, the beaches in Wildwood Crest just keep getting bigger and bigger. But applications filed with regulatory authorities in recent months demonstrate how the beach’s growth creates problems of its own. This spring, the borough had to obtain an emergency beach maintenance permit allowing it to use sand from its front beach – near water’s edge – to address problems at the back, where there is a mishmash of dunes in one area and bulkheads of questionable structural integrity in another.

Emergency work was also needed to address ponds that formed in back beaches as a result of this winter’s storms. With water as deep as three feet in some places, the expansive ponding barred beach access and jarred visitors who, instead of finding a scenic view of the ocean, came upon what appeared to be a new lake covering whole beaches. This spring’s emergency work made beaches usable for tourist season, when between 20,000 and 40,000 beachgoers visit daily, but the borough is trying to come up with long-term solutions. Beach issues were explored at City Hall Thursday, June 3, by environmental consultants Kristin Wildman and Joe Lomax of the Lomax Consulting Group, and borough engineer Jim Verna of Van Note-Harvey, during a special meeting of the borough’s commissioners. The team described recent and anticipated beach efforts in a detailed presentation that left one resident asking why things couldn’t just be as simple as they were 50 years ago.

Shifting sands The quick answer was that circumstances have changed drastically. Wildwood Crest’s beaches range from two to three city blocks in width, much wider than decades ago. One measure of the extent of new growth is that, on three separate occasions over the past nine years, the borough had to extend outfall pipes that traverse the beach in various spots, draining rain water east of Seaview Avenue, by hundreds of feet each round. Beach expansions occur due to the constant deposit of sand along the coastline, Wildman explained last week.  A continuous build-up results from net littoral drift – a fancy term for what happens when sand moving with ocean currents is blocked on its journey south by the Cape May Inlet jetties constructed during the early 1900s between Cape May and Five Mile Island. One of those jetties extends 4,500 feet out into the ocean, Wildman noted, leaving Cape May’s beaches hungry for new sand while Wildwood Crest’s beaches, north of the jetties, get a continual supply, with more deposited at each high tide. While that’s a good thing in some ways, it didn’t prevent damage during this winter’s coastal storms.  If anything, it contributed to the unusual ponding that officials say created a public safety hazard and blocked beach access. And it could have been even worse, she said. “If you get hit with another coastal storm (when ponding exists), there’s no sand surface to create the friction to stop the wave action. If you get another storm surge up over these ponded areas, it’s a straight shot to the dunes and structures,” said Wildman. This winter, the ponding phenomenon placed properties in the back beach area at “critical risk,” she noted.

Solutions, short and long-term Borough officials realized that it had to act quickly to find a short-term fix that would permit tourists to use the beach this summer, Wildman said. The borough obtained emergency permits from the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) and the Army Corps of Engineers, but was required to complete all work by March 30, when protected beach nesting birds typically arrive. Borough Engineer Jim Verna explained last week that the borough determined the most cost-effective and rapid approach would be to collect sand from the front beach to deposit in the back beach’s low ponding areas. Some sand also came from the manmade dunes placed at Rosemary Road between 2007 and 2009.  The state instructed the borough to remove those dunes this spring because they contributed to the ponding problem, Verna said. The emergency process took 375,000 cubic yards of sand, Verna said, noting that the sand taken from water’s edge will be naturally replenished over time. “It was a temporary measure, but it was absolutely necessary,” Verna explained. Commissioners realized that additional, long-term planning was necessary to preserve and protect the borough’s beaches, Wildman said. Engineer Joe Lomax explained that as his firm assessed the beaches, it became clear that the borough needed to augment its existing dune system from Rambler Road north, and to establish a dune system from Rambler Road south – where only three isolated areas of dunes existed. In addition, Wildman noted, because the bulkheads south of Rambler Road lack dune protection and were designed as seawalls, they don’t provide the structural support that could hold up to severe storms. Lomax said his firm concluded that the appropriate remedy for the area north of Rambler Road is to “grow” dunes toward the water by putting in sea fences that will accumulate sand as it blows west, after which strips of American beach grass and more fences will be put in place.  This will move the existing dunes toward the water and not up, he said.  Vegetation will be used to minimize sand blowing back into buildings or roads, he added. As long as beaches are raked and “fluffed,” which helps sand dry so it can blow westward, the sand will find a way to the dune system, the presenters explained.   (Verna noted that elevations of existing dunes, now six to six and a half feet, will in no event be increased over 11.5 feet.) The solution for the southern areas is to build the dunes anew, essentially by the same process. The process of “naturally growing the dunes” is much less costly than bringing in sand from outside, Lomax noted, a process which can cost between $5 to $15 per cubic foot of sand – meaning millions of dollars for a full-beach project. Lomax pointed to the successful dune creation at the Wildwoods Convention Center, which was built on an “absolutely flat” beach. The key is daily beach raking, the experts said, but the full-beach raking needed on Wildwood Crest’s expansive beaches is well beyond the limits of what the state’s general coastal permit allows, and the borough thus became involved in its most recent application for an individualized CAFRA permit. General permits limit beach raking to within 300 feet of a manned lifeguard stand.  They also limit the depth of digging to relocate sand, and permit holders may not dig in an area again until it grows back to what it was before an initial extraction. “We excavated three to four feet in some areas of berms,” Verna said of this spring’s emergency work, “and under a general permit you can only excavate to 12 inches.” Wildman and Verna noted that DEP standards are tailored to typical beach sizes, which range from 100 to 250 feet, not to 1,500-foot beaches like those in the Crest. “We really need this dune system to protect the community, and we have to be able to exceed their standards on raking,” Wildman said of DEP general permit regulations.  “300 feet just isn’t going to cut it here.”

DEP Review The borough’s current application covers the creation, restoration and reinforcement of the borough’s dune system, and the raking and other maintenance activities required to maintain that system. The borough also piggybacked some other projects in the application, in order to avoid multiple DEP processing fees – which can run as high as $30,000. Those other projects include rehabilitation of the clubhouse at the Heather Road Pier and extension of the pedestrian/bike path that runs from Cresse Avenue to Rambler Road. Verna said that, if only the general permit were available, the state would be “trying to impose the impossible on this community.”  The DEP must find ways to help all communities, not just those with replenishment projects, he suggested. The team, and borough commissioners, all urged members of the public to send public comments about the proposed changes to the DEP. The deadline for comment is June 12, and, according to the experts, the DEP is sensitive to community support. Those interested can review a copy of the proposed Oceanfront Management Plan at the city clerk’s office at Borough Hall.

Carole Mattessich can be e-mailed at [email protected] , or you can comment on this story by calling 624-8900, ext. 250.

By BEN LEACH Staff Writer
| Posted: Sunday, January 10, 2010 |

The thought of cutting down and removing trees from Avalon’s treasured maritime forest might seem like the last thing environmentalists would want to do. But Brian Reynolds expresses no remorse as workers removed portions of trees along 74th Street on Thursday morning.

“We have to get them out,” Reynolds said.

Reynolds, who chairs Avalon’s Environmental Commission, is talking about only one kind of tree; the Japanese black pine. When planted in the 1960s, the trees were a great way to keep the dunes from eroding.

As the years pass, however, the problems caused by the trees far outweigh the sole benefit that they provide of stabilizing the soil. The borough has recently launched a long-term project to remove as many of the invasive pine trees as possible.

The pine trees spread and grow quickly, and they’ve pushed other native species out of the way.

“We’ve been finding some of the trees growing as far (from 74th Street) as the primary dunes,” Reynolds said, referring to the dunes found at the northern end of Avalon closer to Townsends Inlet.

The pines also prevent anything from growing. The sand under the trees along 74th Street is covered in 6 to 8 inches of dead needles and other debris.

The damage doesn’t stop at plant life. There’s no food for birds and small mammals to find in the trees. The dead pine trees could bring with them insects and bacteria that could destroy other wildlife in the area.

The pines were brought in to grow and hold the sand in place. But by bringing in non-native plant species, the consequences can affect all surrounding plant life.

“We’ve changed the forests,” said Bob Williams, an independent forester whose company is based in Glassboro, Gloucester County. “We’re ending up with this sort of degraded habitat.”

This isn’t the first time a coastal plant species has gotten out of hand in New Jersey.

“There’s a lot of nonindigenous species in New Jersey,” said Robert Cartica, administrator for the Office of Natural Lands Management in the state’s Department of Environmental Protection. “But there are relatively few that are harmful to the ecosystem.”

Cartica said a similar example would be Asiatic sand sedge, another plant that was used to stabilize the sand but has also pushed out native species.

The borough of Avalon can’t simply bulldoze the black pines out of the ground, according to Reynolds. For all the problems they’re causing, they’re necessary to keep the dunes intact.

That’s why Avalon brought in the Lomax Consulting Group, a Cape May Court House-based firm that specializes in environmental issues, to investigate the project.

The firm studied which species would create the same dune reinforcement effects that the Japanese black pines have without the negative consequences. That meant finding species that were native to the area that could grow roots in the sand and thrive in the coastal environment.

“Not all of the vegetation on the dunes is invasive,” said Peter Lomax, principal consultant for the project.

Trees such as the Eastern red cedar and black cherry and shrubs such as the Northern bayberry and wax myrtle are all local species that thrive in coastal environments while protecting the dunes. They’re the species Avalon plans to use to replace the black pines.

In order to replace the pines properly, workers in Avalon are first removing the dead pines, then trimming the live pines. Reynolds said the borough plans to remove the tops of the trees while leaving the roots to keep the beach stabilized.

When they’re ready to plant the native species again, Reynolds said, they will finally remove the roots of the black pines.

Tree removal has begun, and planting may start later this year. However, Reynolds said that planting can occur only in the spring or the fall when the weather conditions aren’t as extreme.

While the project is beginning, there’s no deadline as to when it should get done. Reynolds said the borough is more concerned with getting the project done right than done fast.

“This isn’t something that’s going to happen overnight,” he said.

Contact Ben Leach: 609-463-6712

[email protected]

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