Incompetance on the Beach

In a town called Surf City, New Jersey a $71 million dollar beach replenishment project occured in March. During this replenishment project, the United States military took sand from an offshore site and brought it on down to Surf City. The fact that there are World War 1 era explosives all throughout this sand is quickly discovered. And the U.S. military scratches it's collective head and says, "oh yeah, I guess we did use that sand as a dumping ground for our bombs a few decades ago."

Surf City looses tons of tourism business as the military works to remove all the old bombs. More than 1,100 explosives were recovered from the sand, and even after tbe beaches were deemed safe to re-open (on Memorial Day weekened, no less), people have discovered at least a dozen more.

The army is concerned enough about this that they now have a full time ordnance specialist at the beach to take care of any unearthed munitions.

So after making a massively ridiculous mistake, costing the town unknown amounts of tourism business while the beaches were closed, and now talking about another beach closure this winter to sweep for more bombs.....

... the military wants the town to help pay for it all.

Read the article here.