Route 40 (https://rtforty.com/series/local-environment/)
I recently came across an article titled “My 5 Favorite Places to Hang with the Kids in NJ” and I was hoping to see some really fantastic local places get the love they deserve. Eagerly, I opened the link and read the article. Nope.
Work to fill Margate’s beaches and build dunes will begin just before Memorial Day and run through Labor Day, according to a document published on Margate City’s website here. The city and some Margate homeowners went to court to try and prevent the dunes, but a judge in February ruled the project could go ahead. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers last year awarded a contract worth up to $76.1 million to Weeks Marine Inc to repair dunes in Atlantic City and Ventnor and to finish building dunes in Margate and Longport. The Army Corps of Engineers and Weeks Marine will “make efforts to accommodate” Margate’s July 4th fireworks, the city document says. The city will also discuss moving its beach patrol building in front of dunes when the project is complete, the document says.
Atlantic City’s trees, which already contend with hurricanes, salt water, pollution, icy winters and scorching concrete, are now also showing wear and tear as a result of the city’s financial crisis and its haphazard patchwork of planning rules. Since the Public Works department’s budget was slashed amid city-wide cuts, there are fewer people on hand to prune, water and care for the city’s greenery. Now, damaged trees are causing hazards and few replacement trees are being planted. City trees matter because, as every elementary school kid knows, they give us oxygen. But they can also help increase property values, make a city more attractive and do useful things like provide shade and suck up storm-water runoff. The importance of having a so-called urban forest is part of state and city law.