Lake Dredging, Flooding Goes On; Point Pleasant Beach Is Fed Up

Andrea Bowne says her dog has to cross his paws before he goes outside to use the bathroom.

Bowne was among several residents who spoke at a recent Point Pleasant Beach Council meeting to say they're tired that their block on Arnold Avenue is often flooded, according to The Ocean Star. Now they want a solution.

The Little Silver Lake dredging project has caused flooding problems on Arnold and Ocean avenues, they say. Among the complaints were frequent flooding and runoff from dredging spoils onto their properties, according to The Ocean Star.

Borough engineer Raymond Savacool said that the project needs to be completed to help mitigate the issue of flooding in the area of Arnold Avenue. But the borough engineer has said for years that the issue may not be completely resolved.

In 2015, Savacool told the Borough Council that the flooding the borough saw that summer in the area of the lake was caused by a combination of several factors.

Little Silver Lake is half the size of Lake of the Lilies, but is the drainage point for nearly 250 acres of the town -- twice as much area as drains into Lake of the Lilies, he said. The result is that it has four times the impact when it comes to stormwater runoff. That combined with 6 inches of rain falling in less than 12 hours during a full-moon high tide resulted in the severe flooding seen on Aug. 13, 2015.

Long-time borough residents who attended an August 2015 council meeting were critical of Savacool’s assessment at that time, saying homes and property that had been in the family for 30 or 40 years or more had never flooded prior to Superstorm Sandy They questioned how there could not be an impact from sand washed into the lake during the storm, as well as years of built-up silt.

John Colvin of Trenton Avenue, whose family had two cars totaled by the flooding, said then that the :ittle Silver Lake hadn’t had any attention in years. Savacool said the elevation is the biggest issue.

“Point Pleasant Beach is a prehistoric extension of Barnegat Bay,” Savacool said, noting that linkages have been found from Lake Louise through Little Silver Lake, Lake of the Lilies and Twilight Lake in Bay Head. That makes those spots natural drainage areas.

“Little Silver Lake tends to overflow because of its elevation,” he said. Savacool said dredging the lake to lower its elevation will help with some of the drainage, but it will not completely fix the problem.

Some flooding issues could be mitigated by other things, such as installing a self-regulating tidal gate between Lake Louise and Little Silver Lake, which would close and stop drainage into Little Silver Lake when the tide rose to a certain point, Savacool has said.

With reporting by Karen Wall

(PHOTO: Flooding on Arnold Avenue in the area of Little Silver Lake after the Aug. 13 storm. Credit: Barnegat Bay Island Facebook page)