MONMOUTH BEACH Just three weeks after Hurricane Sandy ripped apart the Jersey Shore, a beach replenishment project is getting under way in Monmouth Beach.

The beach project had been planned before the storm hit, but state and local officials say the hurricane proved in a very urgent way the need for these efforts to continue.

The Army Corps of Engineers has spent the weeks after Hurricane Sandy examining dunes up and down the Shore to see what they can learn from their engineering projects.

One thing everyone agrees on: Where the dunes were high and wide, there was little if any damage to the homes and businesses behind them. The most destruction, they said, came to the towns with low, narrow dunes.

"If you look at the towns that have had engineered beaches, up and down the state, those are the towns whose damage was minimal," Gov. Chris Christie said during a visit to Monmouth County last week. "Other towns that didnt, the damage was much greater. I think thats a lesson for us as we move forward."

Stewart Farrell, director of the Coastal Research Center at the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, has studied the states dunes for more than two decades. After Sandy, he dispatched three teams from the center to inspect dunes at all of its 105 study sites.

Although state Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Bob Martin said Army Corps-built beaches held up the best against Sandys storm surge, Farrell said those arent the only beaches that fared well. In Barnegat Light, for example, where the dunes have grown by accretion, there are no signs of a hurricane. Farrell said thats because with the design of the walls of the Barnegat Inlet, sand becomes trapped on those beaches and had naturally built dunes some 2,400 feet wide. For comparison, the Army Corps builds dunes 150 feet wide.

By contrast, the Ortley Beach section of Toms River had the lowest and thinnest dunes 10 to 12 feet high and less than 50 feet wide and it sustained the most damage on the coast, Farrell said.

In Mantoloking, where three inlets were cut and many of the 147 oceanfront homes have been destroyed or seriously damaged, town officials had let the dunes grow naturally, with the largest at 22 to 23 feet high and 100 feet wide, Farrell said. The homes that were decimated were behind dunes at least half that size, Farrell said. The houses behind the highest dunes had little or no damage.

"Where the skimpiest dunes were, thats where the inlet formed," he said.

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Dune size determined extent of storm damage on NJ beaches