Voters Won't Get Say on Hardwood for Boardwalk
Some citizens asked City Council to consider a nonbinding referendum in the November election.
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City Council showed no enthusiasm Thursday for revisiting a long and cantankerous environmental debate about using South American hardwood to rebuild a better Boardwalk.
About 15 citizens — a mix of Boardwalk merchants and Ocean City residents — came to Thursday's City Council meeting to ask for a nonbinding referendum in the November election on the issue.
In order to make deadines to have a question placed on the ballot for the November 2012 general election, City Council would have had to vote at Thursday's public meeting.
"Whether you put it on the ballot or not really doesn't matter," Mayor Jay Gillian said.
Gillian said the city does not have the luxury to spend the additional money it would take to use the much more expensive rain forest hardwoods.
"You can't keep tacking stuff on taxpayers," he said.
The city is about to embark on a nine-year multi-million-dollar project to reconstruct the Boardwalk between Fifth and 12th streets, and the administration does not want to continue using the southern yellow pine that splinters and cracks so easily.
The mayor's administration is studying options — including wood products mixed with synthetic agents — and expects to make a recommendation in a month, Gillian said on Thursday.
"We're going to do it right and cost-effectively," he said.
No resolution related to a referendum was part of the meeting agenda on Thursday, and no council member moved to act on suggestions made by the public.
First Ward Councilman Michael DeVlieger said he had considered the wording of a potential referendum question but that he was not confident he could come up with something that could succeed.
Councilman Scott Ping reminded the public that they could organize their own initiative to have the question placed on the November ballot.
In public comment at the July 26 City Council meeting, Johnson's Popcorn owner John Stauffer asked City Council to consider greenheart, a hardwood from Guyana that is reportedly environmentally friendly and sustainable.
Stauffer lives near a stretch of Boardwalk that was redecked with Brazilian ipe in 1988, and 24 years later, the city has not had to replace a single board, he said.
"We live in a democracy where people have the right to vote on very controversial issues," Stauffer said at the Aug. 9 meeting.
After an extended debate, Ocean City passed a resolution in 1997 saying it would not purchase rain forest hardwood. The issue resurfaced a decade later when the city purchased $275,000 worth of Brazilian ipe that still sits unused on city property.
Business Administrator Mike Dattilo said Thursday that the city expects to put the ipe wood up for auction next week through govdeals.com.
"I'm old. I'm tired. I don't want to keep having this fight in Ocean City," said Cynthia Hart, who lamented that she start opposing the use of tropical hardwoods when her now-college-bound son was a baby in a backpack.
In public comment at the end of the meeting, Ocean City resident Georgina Shanley suggested turning the resolution into an ordinance that would legally prohibit the purchase of tropical forest woods.
Duffer
6:19 am on Friday, August 10, 2012
If it went to the voters the environmentalists would lose bigger than BYOB did.
Dubert
6:41 am on Friday, August 10, 2012
I don't get it, the wood is sitting there already purchased. Why not use it up? Any percieved damage to the enviornment has already been done.
Ellen
2:20 pm on Friday, August 10, 2012
Right! How 'tired' are these people? Perhaps they should resign and get some not so 'tired' people to take their places.
RhondaVW
6:45 pm on Friday, August 10, 2012
Dubert,
With all due respect, you are confusing two separate issues. The wood is not "sitting there already purchased". The left over Grasmick wood that is sitting in the city's yard is not enough to deck even 1/5th of a block and in reality shouldn't be used for decking at all because it is not the correct dimension of lumber needed for the current 36"spans. What Mr. Stauffer wants is for more rainforest wood to be bought for decking the boardwalk. This would cause still more environmental damage regardless of whether or not you perceive it.
Fran
8:52 am on Friday, August 10, 2012
I agree-----why not use the wood that's already been purchased, especially with the good results we have already had with it being put down in 1988--24 years ago, and not one board needing to be replaced!!
Edward May
9:24 am on Friday, August 10, 2012
Well we need to get it on the November ballot so lets get the voters to decide what council does not have the stomach to do as Councilman Scott Ping reminded the public that they could organize their own initiative to have the question placed on the November ballot. I have my pen ready to sign.
Lisa
9:25 am on Friday, August 10, 2012
It makes the most sense to use the wood that is sitting in storage, possilbly to redo a high traffic area, and then to use something else in the future.
vic
9:42 am on Friday, August 10, 2012
synthetic composite woods that the environmentalists are proposing repel water and become extremely slippery when it rains. just what we need with our tourists. bamboo is a hardwood which is sustainable. why isnt it being considered?
Ellen
2:21 pm on Friday, August 10, 2012
Agreed Ed. @Vic you too are right. Bamboo, you cannot kill that stuff. It would grow back in a week!
RhondaVW
7:01 pm on Friday, August 10, 2012
Vic you are right. Recycled Structural Plastics do repel water which is one of the reasons they last so long, However ipe also repels water which is why it is so slippery when wet. But the plastics actually have a wood grain embossed on them for traction which actually makes them less slippery than the smooth ipe when wet.
There are samples of both materials on the boardwalk so I would invite you to try them for yourself.
And, while bamboo is actually a grass and not a hardwood, I agree it should be looked into as a decking option.
Herb Townsend
1:20 pm on Friday, August 10, 2012
This situation is absolutely insane! Tropical hardwood has proven itself to be the best wood available for this application. Why do we allow ourselves to be bullied by a small but vocal minority whose objections are based on questionable facts and logic? The question should definitely be put to ballot, and allow this issue to be resolved.
GeneralNathanJessup
2:44 pm on Friday, August 10, 2012
Lets Do This!!!! As you may the opposition (approx. 10 strong) and their wacko leftist gadflys and environmentally friendly groupies are the vocal majority. My neighbors, friends, and relatives who visit Ocean City have never voiced one concern over the IPE. I say go IPE or go home!!!! Yes lets pass the petition and bring the fight to these liberal wacko's. Remember you have to crack a few eggs to make an omelet!!! Hopefully once we win those Kamikaze pigeons will end their IPE revolt and stop diving on the bridge!!! Word is the pigeons are being trained and funded by the Fairness In Taxes group who are still angry over the 900 million dollar bridge the State gave us. To the vocal gadflys I say, "Remember you have the cleanest, safest, and most fiscally responsible town so take a deep breath and pay your unbelievably low tax bill due at the end of the month. You should know we are "TIRED" also, tired of your liberal in your face activism. We dont want your COAH, your save the tree campaign, burn the flag party, or smoke the rope for life bs around here. As a recent marine corps retiree stated, "When I signed up being gay was prohibited, it has since been accepted policy, I am retiring now before it becomes mandatory!!!!!!!!
Ellen
2:23 pm on Friday, August 10, 2012
Cynthia Hart - why don't you be the first to leave your post and make way for a more 'energetic' and right thinking council person. If you're tired and old then do what's in the best interest of the city!
Peg Miller
2:53 pm on Friday, August 10, 2012
ILet 's get the petition going! Ipe all the way!
OCLocal
4:51 pm on Friday, August 10, 2012
I think it is too late to get it on the Ballot this November, would have to get enough signatures for a special election (Cost $40,000 or so) or wait until next November. Do you think they delayed the vote on purpose?
William Sullivan
3:38 pm on Friday, August 10, 2012
Business Administrator Mike Dattilo said Thursday that the city expects to put the ipe wood up for auction next week through govdeals.com. SOUNDS LIKE IPE has no chance in OC ! We lost out $. Wasted tax dollars. Sad!~~!
granatthebeach
5:21 pm on Friday, August 10, 2012
Why would we allow a few loud voices to silence what many more in OC want? If we used ipe or something similar it will be around for many more decades than the tree huggers will be.
Virgil Harris
6:10 pm on Friday, August 10, 2012
Well, I am quite satisfied that the oc faithful will not have the opportunity to vote on this issue. The faithful here are quite stupid when it comes to seeing a good thing right in front of their faces. The hardwood last 12 years on the AC boardwalk and close to 30 years down the southend. And don't even get me started on the tree hugger population here in oc! Sometimes democracy can be the death of us as much as it defines us, just look at our president!
Eric Sauder
7:06 pm on Friday, August 10, 2012
Had it gone to referendum (and it still could) and the question was "do you support the use of rain forest hardwood for redecking the boardwalk?" my answer would have been "no." No because there are other alternatives. I don't like my choices between southern pine and rain forest hardwood. The solution is to find a decking material that has a relatively long life, is fairly economical to install, and does not do damage to the environment. I don't see it as an "either or", and to operate under the assumption that rain forest hardwood is the only alternative to pine is (I think) short sighted.
RhondaVW
7:15 pm on Friday, August 10, 2012
Hello Mr. Sauder,
Here are some decking materials that the ipe supporters never seem to find when they are looking for alternatives.
http://www.accoya.com/
http://www.cambiawood.com/
http://www.kebony.com/
http://www.perennialwood.com/
http://www.timbersilwood.com/
http://www.siberianlarchproducts.com/
Eric Sauder
7:31 pm on Friday, August 10, 2012
Thanks for the links and I'll check them out. I believe it was accoya that Dr. Fenichel suggested we look into? It is produced from recycled materials and was developed at Rutgers? Should it prove its worth we would have the added bonus of spending money in the local economy.
RhondaVW
9:04 pm on Friday, August 10, 2012
I believe you are referring to "Axion" which is recycled structural plastic that was developed by Dr. Nosker at Rutgers. I did not include links to the many structural plastics but Atlantic City is looking at them as well as alternatives to their ipe which doesn't give them its advertised lifespan on their high traffic boardwalk.
Duffer
9:10 pm on Friday, August 10, 2012
What gets me with the enviro-nuts is that they don't want wood yet all sorts of products made out of a plastic petro-chemical soup are ok with them. Nothing is more natural than wood. Its an amazing thing, you cut down a tree and plant a new one and it grows back. Like magic!!! Yest somehow plastic or chemical based products are fine with them. Its absurd.
When you strip it all down what these people really object to is that there is a boardwalk at all along with the evil capitalism that goes with it.
RhondaVW
9:40 pm on Friday, August 10, 2012
I don't believe people have any objection to wood but rather an objection to the type, manner, and consequences of how and where some wood is obtained. An ipe tree can take up to 100 years to mature. While that is something magical I don't think it is the type of "magic" you are referencing.
Take a look around you. Tennis rackets, golf clubs, boats and planes. You name it and if it was once made out of wood chances are you are using a better performing composite version of it now.
Absurd would be not taking advantage of all the developments made possible by evil capitalist. :)
Eric Sauder
10:51 pm on Friday, August 10, 2012
I hear you Duffer but there's another side to this as was discovered when rain forests were cleared for agriculture. The soil is not that good and after a few years is exhausted. More rain forest is cleared. Since it is the trees that hold the soil in place much if it erodes away and winds up in the watershed. "Harvesting" those trees leads to an environmental disaster of biblical proportions for that region, and for the planet as a whole. The rain forest wood now being proposed, according to Georgina Shanely, takes over 200 hundred years to mature. We would be lucky to survive that long (given the impact to the climate). LIke it or not it is a scientific fact that trees remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.and replace it with oxygen. I'm not a bleeding heart environmentalist but I do care about the planet. It's the only home we got. To say that what happens in the rain forest has no impact on what happens here in Ocean City (other than the boardwalk) is nuts.
RhondaVW
11:08 pm on Friday, August 10, 2012
This Google Earth Engine time lapse of deforestation is worth a 1000 words.
http://earthengine.google.org/#intro/AmazonTimelapse
RhondaVW
9:23 pm on Friday, August 10, 2012
www.axionintl.com/
http://www.plasticboards.com/
www.renewplastics.com/
http://www.tangentusa.com/
http://www.trimaxbp.com/
vic
11:57 pm on Friday, August 10, 2012
when these synthetic composite materials have to be replaced, how do you dispose of them? will they decompose like natural wood products? seems to run against what environmentalists advocate.
RhondaVW
8:01 am on Saturday, August 11, 2012
Vic, Your concern for our environment is admirable. We should all be more concerned about what has happened to all the chemicals and heavy metals in the common treated lumber used in this country over the last several decades, and what is happening as one of the world's largest carbon sinks is being destroyed.
As for the pure HDPE plastic composites, they are made from 70% - 100% recycled content and therefor completely recyclable themselves. In fact one company is working on a program that would allow cities like ours to exchange their waste plastics for credit towards new material.
As for the modified woods, most are treated with heat or pressure and organic compounds that will decay harmlessly. Siberian Larch is a 100% natural wood, TimberSil is totally exempt from EPA regulation, and Kebony for example uses alcohol from agricultural crop waste if my memory serves.
anonymous
4:41 pm on Saturday, August 11, 2012
How could anyone possibly believe that it would be a 9 year project to resurface 6 blocks of boardwalk with wood that is already on the island ? Are they planning on replacing one board per day? That's an insane estimate. And they want to sell what they have so they can pay an outside company to do it with thier own material and labor, instead of using what is already paid for and using township workers to do the labor. Don't have enough twp workers on hand? Hire more, there are plenty of local construction workers unemployed right now. Maybe Chris Christie dosent want to see that many new jobs added to this failing economy ? Chris Christie...how do you even trust a guy who's first and last names are so close to being the same ? OC politics are just as corrupt as anywhere else and this issue just proves it over and again..
Sam Lavner
5:04 pm on Saturday, August 11, 2012
Rhonda - Don't be a party pooper with your facts, reasonableness, and polite rebuttal. Can't you see that you ruin the Know-Nothings' fun? Now they've moved on to another topic where they can just emit viscera with no chance of disarming blow-back.
george
11:53 am on Sunday, August 12, 2012
Has anyone ever seen plastic products in a fire? They are made of oil. I wouldn't want to have my store parked in front of a plastic boardwalk.
RhondaVW
2:16 pm on Sunday, August 12, 2012
Hi George,
No need to worry, the recycled structural plastics that would be used on our Boardwalk are all Class B fire rated materials. If you shoot me your email I can send you some video of RSP being torched and you will see that it basically self extinguishes itself. With additives - more magnesium hydroxide I believe - it can be made into a Class A material but the nuclear power plants that use it don't seem to think that is necessary so I can't imagine we would require it.
If you do have your store parked next to the Boardwalk and are concerned about fires I would back it up a bit because the current pine is only a C Fire Rated material.
YiiiiiiikesYo
5:38 pm on Sunday, August 12, 2012
Here we go again - starting from scratch...rebutting all of the false claims, idiotic arguments, throwiing facts up against impervious bias. We showed council the video of high pressure torches blasting the boardwalk plastics three years ago. It is not slippery, toxic; it does not look like legos (it actually is made to look exactly the way you want it to look and it continues to look like that for decades (unlike ipe which looks gray and faded), blah blah blah. And it took less than a day for the pro-rainforest wood gang to respond to the environmentalists' facts with "environmental wackos" in leau of facts, science, financials, etc of their own. Fortunately this time around we have a practical mayor and not a machiavellian one to fuel the greed, ignorance, and knee-jerk anti-environmentalist sentiment more at play in OC than in just about every other part of the civilized world.
jimmy wildwood
1:00 am on Monday, August 13, 2012
An Ipe tree takes 100 years to mature? Me too! Lets use a composite of recycled beach tags and shopping bags. As for the current stockpile of tropical wood, sell off personalized Memorial Boards and Benches to be mixed in with the composite. I want my board in front of a Johnson's Popcorn. My goal is STD awareness, I've had a few good ones. Where's my 3-day walk? Where's my mud run? Are you listening Oprah? At least I'll have my bench. It'll have crabs on it.
vic
1:39 am on Monday, August 13, 2012
sam just being sam, again. how many people are on your "i'm not talking to you" list now.
George Malcolm
11:07 am on Monday, August 13, 2012
AhH, ThE BrAve AnOnoMuOuS, lOwEr CaSe ViC pRoViNg HiS dEtRaCtOrS rIgHt AgGaIn.