PORT WASHINGTON, Wis. — Port Washington's North Beach is closed indefinitely after part of the city's North Bluff slid down the hill overnight following heavy spring rain.
The overnight landslide blocked access to the beach just as the weather warmed up for a perfect beach day. With more rain in the forecast and unstable trees visible at the top of the bluff, the city is working on how to safely remove the fallen earth.
Watch: Longtime Port Washington residents react after another bluff landslide
Beachgoers and walkers arrived Monday morning to find a literal roadblock.
"My takeaway is it's not going to be fixed very quickly," Bridget Molitor said.
The city has already planned more remediation work this year, which is expected to cost $6 million. The mudslide may cause that work to be moved up.
Parks Director Jon Crain noted the city has been working on solutions for years, including after a similar failure in 2022 closed the beach.
"A little bit surprised because we did have this area fail once before, just to the North of it, and we did some work to remediate that," Crain said. "I don't see an imminent threat, but anything's possible if you get the right combination."
Residents are familiar with the bluff's instability. Cathy Sepper has lived on the bluff for five decades.
"It's probably gotten worse in the last 10, 20 (years)," Sepper said. "We had a lot of rain the last several days, and it's just fragile. Sometimes there's a half of a fix you can do, and it'll work for a while, but maybe we have to do the big fix."
This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.
It’s about time to watch on your time. Stream local news and weather 24/7 by searching for “TMJ4” on your device.
Available for download on Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, and more.
