1 Introduction 



The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) and the state of New Jersey are 

 constructing the largest beach restoration project ever undertaken in the United 

 States, known as the "Atlantic Coast of New Jersey, Sandy Hook to Barnegat 

 Inlet, Section I, Sea Bright to Ocean Township." Its purpose is to protect 

 12 miles 1 of heavily eroded and highly developed north New Jersey shore from 

 coastal storm damages. The total initial project cost is estimated at $165 million 

 (Federal and non-Federal costs). The primary source for the beach quality 

 sediment is a 3-square-mile area located 1 to 3 miles offshore of the southern end 

 of Sandy Hook (Figure 1). Ocean-going hopper or cutterhead dredges excavate 

 sediment (initial project construction total of 18.5 million cu yd) from the 

 authorized borrow area and, with the assistance of nearshore pump-out facilities, 

 transport the material onto the beaches. The project is scheduled to be 

 constructed in four phases as individual contracts are awarded per section of 

 beach and designated area within the authorized borrow area (i.e., contracts 1A, 

 IB, 2, and 3). Construction started in 1994 with the award of contract 1A and 

 contract IB was awarded in 1995. Fifty years of periodic beach renourishment 

 are programmed into this project. 



Within a very short period after initiation of Contract 1A, ordnance were 

 discovered on the newly constructed beaches. Expensive cleanup operations 

 were required to locate and remove the ordnance from the beach. The source of 

 this material was determined to be ordnance mined along with the borrow, 

 although there had been no preproject data suggesting the presence of this 

 contamination. To eliminate further risk of ordnance ingestion, the project 

 dredges where fitted with 1.5-in. square grates over the dragheads. These grates 

 prohibit excavation of the ordnance, thus protecting the dredge and the resultant 

 beach area from unexploded ordnance (UXO) contamination. However, the 

 grates also reduced the efficiency of the dredging operation by an estimated 

 20 percent. Over the 50-year project life, the presence of these grates and the 

 reduced dredging efficiency could cost hundreds of millions of dollars in lost 

 productivity. 



The U.S. Army Engineer District, New York (NAN) asked the U.S. Army 

 Engineer Waterways Experiment Station (WES) to evaluate and make 

 recommendations on a means of characterizing the ordnance contamination in the 



A table of factors for converting non-SI units of measurement to SI units is presented on page ix. 

 Chapter 1 Introduction 



