A listing that says "boat slip" tells you there is a slip. It doesn't tell you how deep the water is at low tide, and it doesn't tell you how that depth gets restored when sediment builds up again. In Avalon, maintenance dredging of private slips and their access channels has been carried out under a ten-year Department of the Army permit, and the Borough's dredging records from that permit include the private slip owners who took part. That authorization expired on December 31, 2024.
Its replacement has been in progress for over a year. The Borough applied for a new federal permit in 2025 and filed a matching state application. In September 2026, Borough Council adopted the local ordinance that will govern how owners and their contractors use it. If you're buying or selling a home on one of Avalon's lagoons or back-bay harbors, find out where that system stands before you're under contract.
How a Private Slip Gets Dredged Here
Dredging in New Jersey's coastal waters is regulated, including dredging in man-made lagoons. The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection states that dredging has no coastal exemption and no permit-by-rule. A qualifying lagoon maintenance project may use Coastal General Permit 16, and other projects may need individual permits. Going that route alone takes some work. NJDEP's GP16 checklist asks for site plans signed and sealed by a licensed New Jersey professional, along with proposed dredge depths, cross-sections, a disposal location, and notice to owners within 200 feet.
Avalon's proposed approach puts one permit over the whole back-bay system, with owners using it one slip at a time. Private slip work tied to a Borough effort has a history here. In 2014, the Borough gave owners the chance to contract directly with its dredging contractor while that contractor was already working on the Borough's own project. The owner paid for the slip work, and the material could go on Borough land at no charge to the owner. The Borough was not a party to those private contracts.
The federal permit that expired at the end of 2024 covered ten years of maintenance dredging in the back bays, and the Borough counts private slip owners among those who used it.
What the Borough Asked For
The Borough of Avalon filed for a new ten-year Department of the Army permit with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Philadelphia District. The application is No. NAP-2007-00486-95, and Mott MacDonald is the Borough's agent. The Corps published its public notice on August 6, 2025, and the comment period ended September 5, 2025.
The notice spells out the mechanics. Dredging would be voluntary. Each owner would contract for their own slip and its access channel area, and the Borough would oversee the work through a local permit. Each owner would file paperwork naming the Borough as their agent for the dredging and would notify it when work starts and when it finishes.
It also names fourteen waterways: Cornell Harbor, Pennsylvania Harbor, Princeton Harbor, Third Avenue Waterway, Porpoise Lagoon, an unnamed waterway, Long Reach, Neptune Thorofare, Yale Harbor, Bluefish Harbor, Sailfish Lagoon, Tarpon Lagoon, Salmon Lagoon and Whale Harbor. If the home you're considering sits on one of them, this program is how its slip would be maintained.
The application proposes these technical terms:
| Term in the application | What it says |
|---|---|
| Target depth | -5.0 feet below Mean Low Water, plus 1.0 foot of allowable overdredge |
| Side slopes | 3:1 |
| Area | About 5.78 acres of bay bottom |
| Estimated volume | About 28,500 cubic yards over ten years, roughly 75% sand and 25% silt |
| Method | Mechanical dredging into watertight scows, then sealed trucks |
| Where it goes | Upland disposal at Surrans Soil Replenishment, LLC in Corbin City, Atlantic County |
| Scope limit | Restore slips to authorized dimensions, with no lateral expansion or deepening |
Two rows matter most for a buyer. The depth and scope rows describe what the Borough proposed, which is maintenance back to authorized dimensions with no deepening. The disposal row explains part of the cost. Material from each slip gets loaded and trucked off the island to Atlantic County rather than placed nearby.
The volume figure also says something about participation. The Borough based its 28,500 cubic yard estimate on dredging data from the previous ten-year permit, including how many owners took part, plus the additional owners it expects to join over the next decade. Owners on these lagoons have used this program before, and the Borough expects more of them to use it.
The State Application Runs Alongside It
The federal permit is one of two approvals. NJDEP's bulletin of August 20, 2025 lists "Avalon Back Bay Dredging (Boat Slips)," activity number 0501-25-0016.1, described as "Dredging of back bay lagoon individual privately owned boat slips within the Borough." It was filed as a Waterfront Individual Permit. NJDEP received the application on May 28, 2025 and deemed it administratively complete on August 6, 2025.
NJDEP also notes that dredging at or below mean high water in tidelands may need a Tidelands license, and that an artificial lagoon can still contain tidelands that were once flowed by natural tidal waters. This comes up again in the Borough's new ordinance.
Ordinance 913-2026 Builds the Local Piece
The federal application describes Borough oversight "through a local permit process." Borough Council created that process in Ordinance 913-2026. It passed on first reading August 26, 2026, was adopted September 9, 2026, and was approved by the Mayor the same day. The Cape May County Herald covered the plan in August under the headline "Avalon Prepares to Provide Private Dredging Opportunities on a Borough Permit."
According to the Borough's summary of the ordinance, it repeals Avalon's old rules for dredging equipment operators and replaces them with two articles.
- Article One, contractors. Contractors get a Borough license and must file an equipment inventory, which the Borough inspects. The article covers stop-work orders, suspension or revocation of a license with an appeal process, insurance requirements, and indemnification of the Borough.
- Article Two, property owners. Owners need a municipal permit to dredge a private boat slip. The article covers the application and review process, fees and other costs including payment of any Tidelands claims, rules for how the work is done, construction site requirements, stop-work orders and appeals, and penalties.
The summary doesn't list dollar amounts. The full ordinance is available free from the Borough Clerk's Office at 3100 Dune Drive, 8:15 a.m. to 4:15 p.m. on weekdays. Anyone budgeting for slip work should read it, especially the Tidelands line. Under Article Two, a Tidelands claim is one of the costs an owner may pay as part of the permit.
The ordinance also makes contractor choice part of the process. Because the ordinance has contractors licensed by the Borough, the first thing to check about a dredging quote is whether that contractor holds one.
Healthy Channels Don't Settle It
In August, the Herald reported that borough engineer Thomas Thornton of Mott MacDonald found the back-bay channels in relatively good shape. This month, the Borough finished the Townsends Inlet channel work. As the Cape May Scanner reported, crews removed about 130,000 cubic yards of sand under a $1.6 million emergency contract that Avalon and Sea Isle City agreed to split, and the job wrapped up November 3 along with the north end beach fill.
Both concern public waterways. The inlet project was a navigation-channel cut, and the Borough said the inlet supports $15 million to $21 million in economic activity each year. The space between a bulkhead and the channel is a different matter. The federal application describes that area as private slips and access channels whose depth is "the responsibility of the individual vessel slip owners." The same notice gives the reason for the program. Sediment buildup had "impaired" private slips and access channels to the point of affecting how safely recreational boats could reach the lagoons and channels.
Under the application, the stretch from a slip out to the channel is the owner's to maintain, through the Borough program described above.
Where This Shows Up in a Purchase
On a lagoon home, I'd put these items on the list as soon as there's serious interest, and well before inspection deadlines start running:
- Find the waterway. Confirm whether the property sits on one of the fourteen waterways named in the federal application.
- Ask the seller for history. That includes when the slip was last dredged, who did the work, and any permit or Borough paperwork tied to it.
- Check the water at low tide. Look at the slip in person or have someone you trust do it, since the listing photos may have been taken at high tide.
- Confirm the program's current status with the Borough. Ask whether the federal and state permits are active, whether owners can apply for a local permit under Ordinance 913-2026, and what the fees are.
- Price a contractor through the new process. Get quotes only from contractors who hold the Borough license, and ask them to include trucking and disposal.
Sellers can take the same list and answer it ahead of time. A folder with the slip's dredging history and any Borough permits gives a buyer answers in writing. Without it, a buyer's attorney or inspector may raise the slip as an open question late in the deal.
This post is general information about public permits and Borough rules. It isn't legal, tax or financial advice, so please confirm your own property's situation with an attorney, a marine contractor or the Borough directly.
If you're looking at a home on Princeton Harbor, Sailfish Lagoon or any of Avalon's other back-bay waterways, I'm glad to walk the bulkhead with you at low tide and help you pull the slip's history together before you commit. That's part of the local work I do every day with Joseph Butler at Purdy Real Estate. Let's Connect.
