Project 1:

Atlantic & Burlington County Sites

Priority

58 - Bass Harbor

Bass Harbor lies along the Somers Point – Longport Boulevard on the salt marsh between a pair of waterside developments with vessel slips.  The site is confined with highly modified walls, but the concentration of material is centralized on the salt marsh part of the site.  There is pristine salt marsh to either side of the deposit courtesy of the confinement.  A combination of soil auguring and piston coring produced 6.5 feet of penetration into orange-yellow pebbly sand with some fine material (70.2% medium sand).  There was a substantial concentration of bog iron present as well.  The deep soil probe penetrated 6.0 feet at another site and found similar materials with heavier clay concentration near the base of the core.  This site has priority re-use potential due to the presence of a track across mixed depositional materials from the highway to the majority of the deposit.  It would be exceptionally easy to convert this site into a perpetual use facility.  Environmental permits would have the least issues due to the presence of the existing track into the site, the access to heavy equipment exists at present, but needs to be upgraded to handle multiple truck trips extracting material.  The only other problem foreseen would be the neighboring communities’ reluctance to see any change toward a re-use facility take place as a “negative impact on their property values”.