Pilot Study to Characterize Ordnance Contamination within the Sea Bright, New Jersey, Sand Borrow Site

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Pilot Study to Characterize Ordnance Contamination within the Sea Bright, New Jersey, Sand Borrow Site

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Pope, Joan / Lewis, Richard D. / Morang, Andrew / Welp, Timothy L.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the state of New Jersey have undertaken the largest beach restoration project in U.S. history, known as the "Atlantic Coast of New Jersey, Sandy Hook to Barnegat Inlet, Section I, Sea Bright to Ocean Township." Within a very short period after the initiation of construction in 1994, ordnance were discovered on the newly constructed beaches. The expensive cleanup operations that were required to locate and remove the ordnance from the beach included fitting project dredges with 15-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 contamination. However, the grates also reduce the efficiency of the dredging operation by an estimated 20 percent Over the 50-year life of the project, this could cost hundreds of mill.ions of dollars in lost productivity. The U.S. Army Engineer District, New York, asked the U.S. Army Engineer Waterways Experiment Station to evaluate and make recommendations on a means of characterizing the ordnance contamination in the bonow area Once the coverage and extent of the contamination have been determined, it may be possible to identify sections that can be dredged in a conventional manner or to design a practical and safe predredging cleanup operation. WES conducted a review of several technologies and recommended a ''pilot study" to test oceanographic/geophysical systems for their suitability in detecting ordnance at the Sea Bright site. The New York: District concurred with this recommendation and the pilot study conducted by WES is reported herein.