Local dunes not ready for fencing, city says

Summer tourists noticing a lack of fencing to protect beach dunes from being trampled might wonder if Ocean City stopped worrying about this first line of defense during storms.

City Engineer Terry McGean has a simple explanation: the dunes aren’t ready to be protected.

“After winter storm Jonas, a lot of the dunes got heavily damaged and the beach got damaged,” he said. “Normally, the dune would have a rope fence along the east edge of it that got destroyed during the storm.”

Although Ocean City was able to repair the dunes following the winter storm, two issues prevented the rope fence from being installed just yet, McGean said.

“One, it took us through the end of May to repair the dune and obviously you can’t fence a dune that’s not there,” he said. “Two, when we do beach replenishment, we will likely have to remove a lot of that fence we just put up to do beach replenishment.”

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