Waterfront retaining walls in LBI & Southern Ocean County, NJ

The walls that hold back the yard rather than the bay — grade-change and landscape walls on waterfront lots, rebuilt tied and drained.

It's one of the more common calls we get across LBI & Southern Ocean County, NJ.

What usually prompts the call

• A landscape or garden wall leaning above the bulkhead
• A grade change near the water held by a failing wall
• A terraced waterfront yard losing its shape
• Upland soil pushing against a wall that was never sized for it

How it's normally handled

Not every wall on a waterfront lot holds back the bay — some hold back the yard. Waterfront retaining walls manage the grade change between the upland and the bulkhead, and they take soil and water pressure from behind. Rebuilt in block, stone, or engineered systems, tied and drained so they do not simply lean out again.

$4,000 – $20,000 — typical range, not a quote. What your home needs can only be settled by a registered contractor who comes out and looks at it.

Bulkhead or retaining wall? They are not the same thing

A large share of the retaining wall calls we get in Ocean County start with an owner who is not sure which of their two walls is the problem — and on a waterfront lot there usually are two. The bulkhead is the marine structure at the water's edge, driven into the bay bottom, holding the lot against tidal water and tied back to buried anchors. A waterfront retaining wall sits above and behind it, holding a grade change in the yard, and it is loaded by soil and groundwater rather than by the bay.

They fail differently and they are permitted differently, which is why the distinction is worth getting right before anyone quotes. A bulkhead losing its tie-backs leans toward the water and takes backfill with it. A retaining wall failing above a sound bulkhead usually bulges or steps out of line because it is holding saturated soil with nowhere to drain. And on plenty of Ocean County lagoon lots, the retaining wall is failing because the bulkhead below it has moved — the ground it was built on is no longer where it was.

What this means on an Ocean County lot

On the lagoon communities — Beach Haven West, Mystic Island, Baywood, Forked River, Silverton — most lots are made ground from the dredge-and-fill era, so a terraced or raised yard behind the bulkhead is very common and so are the walls holding it. On the open bayfront and the barrier island bay sides, the grade change is often sharper and the drainage harder, because there is less depth behind the wall to work with.

Permitting splits along the same line. A retaining wall entirely upland of the bulkhead, above the tidal influence, is generally a municipal matter through your township or borough construction office. Anything at or waterward of the bulkhead line, or that affects the bulkhead itself, brings NJDEP waterfront development or CAFRA review and tidelands documentation into it. An assessment that treats both walls as one job is how owners end up in the wrong process.

If you are not sure which wall is moving, that is the normal starting point and it is what an inspection at low tide settles. Tell us what you are seeing and we will get a registered local contractor to look at both.