Calls for long-term solution after dunes breach closes Route 1
Posted by Leslie Kopp & Christi Arndt on Friday, September 6th, 2024 at 12:57pm
Credit to: Coastal Point, Mike Smith
Photo courtesy of Susan Lyons
With a second dunes breach in five months forcing the closure of Route 1, both northbound and southbound, overnight on Aug. 18, some local officials this week said, “Enough is enough,” referencing a common definition of insanity.
State Rep. Ronald E. Gray (R-38th), whose district line stops at the middle of the Indian River Inlet Bridge, called out DNREC officials for a lapse in shoring up the dunes last time, in March.
“DNREC has dropped the ball,” said Gray. “They thought they had done enough in March. We are trying to get DNREC to do this advanced dredging, and they need to be more proactive.”
“Our delegation is trying to get a meeting called with DNREC and DelDOT to get a long-term plan together. You can dredge on the south inlet and put the materials on the north side with the cranes, too, and they have not done it in the past three years.”
“We may have had a false sense of security,” he said of the recent dunes breach. “We piped in sand from Massey’s Landing and felt they did a great job last spring. The U.S. Army Corps must be involved along with our federal delegation. [Route] 1 is an evacuation route, a road for our public safety officials and a direct link to Beebe hospital, and it’s also critical to our economy.”
Under pressure from a high tide and a storm, the waves broke through the dunes on the north side of the inlet on the evening of Aug. 18, with water and sand deposits from the broken dune forcing the lane closures. DelDOT closed Route 1 at Fred Hudson Road in North Bethany for traffic safety and to allow work crews to access the breach. After initial clearing, a decision was made to add rip-rap stone to the dunes to reinforce them. With rip-rap, loose stone is used to form a foundation for a breakwater or other structure.
“I am going to work very hard to come up with a long-term solution. We just can’t have a quick fix this time,” said Gray. “We cannot do a patch-and-fix approach.”
“There are a lot of great employees at DNREC, but they have dropped the ball in the last couple of years,” Gray said. “You cannot call a dredging contractor and expect them to come the next week. DNREC has been dragging their feet,” on extending the beach through dredging, he asserted. “White’s Creek is another example — it took us two years and that should have been done in one. We had to extend it twice,” he added of permitting for the contractors doing the work. “It’s not an easy thing to do.”
“We did a better job years ago than we have done the last four or five years. We are going to try to come up with a solution,” Gray said, agreeing with state Sen. Gerald Hocker (R-20th), who wrote a letter to DNREC, asking why its dunes are not holding.
Mike Powell — treasurer and a spokesperson for the Surfrider Foundation for Sussex County, who lives in Milton — agreed with those assessments. He had penned warning letters last February, expressing his concern about weather and erosion events, and calling on the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for more help.
“We have no trouble getting Surfrider volunteers at the north-side beach, because there is so much passion and interest in protecting that area,” he said of the location that’s popular with local surfers. “We don’t have the means to operate heavy equipment, so we depend on the State,” said Powell.
“It happened in March, and then again last week,” he said of the breach.
“First of all — that rock they are putting in concerns us. We understand protecting the road is paramount. But those rocks are undersized,” said Powell of the rip-rap. “The erosion has resulted in a lot of that rock getting moved around already. This will only contribute to future debris problems. It is already on the beach and has worked its way down from the dune.”
“It is not going to hold unless a lot more is done,” said Powell.
“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result,” he agreed. “There seems to be several agencies involved, with DNREC, DelDOT and the State Parks, and we have an issue with whose budget may be responsible for this work.”
The Corps is responsible for mitigating the effects of their jetties on the north beach, and the jetty system blocks the flow of sand from the south to the north, noted Powell.
“The sand bypass system has not pumped hardly any sand in the last 10 years. The sand bypass is not doing its job to mitigate these shore impacts. The north beach is suffering tremendously,” Powell said. “What is needed is a new supplemental system.”
“We need a long-term plan, like the town beaches have for sand and beach replenishment, on the north beach to address this erosion with some periodic projects. That is what is needed at Indian River Inlet.”
Old pump to be upgraded soon
The Gould pump in the sand bypass system station is more than 60 years old.
The Corps “are replacing the diesel pumps with electric ones now,” said Powell. “They finally got rid of that old diesel pump motor, and these electric ones may work better. The diesel ones had far more hours on them than they were capable of pumping.”
“We hear these new pumps will be operational by the end of the winter.”
Gray said, though, that these short-term fixes are not enough.
“We need to get the governor involved. That main route cannot be shut down. I have my friends calling me: ‘What the heck is going on here?’”
Bethany Beach Mayor Rosemary Hardiman sent a note on this second dunes breach. She said she was in alignment with recommendations from former DNREC head Collin O’Mara, who is presently a candidate for governor.
“Here are my thoughts about the ongoing breach at the Indian River Inlet: It’s vitally important for the State to find a permanent solution to the ongoing problem of flooding on SR1 north of the Inlet,” she wrote. “In order to do that, I agree with former DNREC Secretary Collin O’Mara’s suggestion in a recent article that, among other things, ‘…We must rebuild our partnership with the Army Corps, and work together to forge and implement comprehensive, long-term solutions for coastal protection.
“‘So many recent successful joint projects — from the nourishment of our ocean beaches to the restoration of Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge and Mispillion Harbor — are a direct result of our long-standing partnership and the tireless leadership of [U.S.] Sen. [Tom] Carper, who effectively uses his chairmanship of the Senate Environment & Public Works Committee to secure hundreds of millions of dollars for restoration projects implemented in partnership with the Army Corps.’”
“‘We must replicate these past successes and partner formally with the Army Corps on protecting Route 1 and the Indian River Inlet bridge by establishing a 100-foot-wide dune with a 200-foot beach,’” she quoted.
“Moreover, as Secretary O’Mara also proposed: ‘We must collaborate with the Army Corps on reducing flooding in the Inland Bays, restoring our ocean beaches to an even higher level of protection, and finally restoring our Delaware Bay beaches (where Sen. Carper has secured tens of millions for restoration projects that will only require a 10 percent state match). Proactively investing in coastal restoration and natural defenses is an absolute imperative.’”
Anne Sakalay is a Towers Shores resident who has just completed some upgrades to her home near the Indian River Inlet Bridge.
“We had dinner guests on Aug. 18 come from Rehoboth who had decided to take an Uber to our Tower Shores neighborhood. We figured out there was a breach, because they could not go home that evening up the Coastal Highway, that the only way home was going around. It was like a $90 fare,” Sakalay said.
“My reaction is that this dune needs to be fixed permanently. I have been following this story, and it does not seem like anyone is connecting the dots. They want to do directional drilling for U.S. Wind just south of the bridge. What impact will that have on our dunes?” she said of the proposed landing of power cables from the planned offshore wind farm.
“Are we setting ourselves up for another breach point? Are we underestimating the power of that current in the inlet under that bridge? And it is very powerful,” said Sakalay. “We would like to know in our community if anyone is paying attention. All of these things don’t exist in isolation. This is an area of extremely strong current. Why are the state and federal agencies so siloed?”
“We should have a fix,” she said. “And we should be cautious about any drilling anywhere near the Indian River Inlet. We should not look at these things in isolation or theoretically. We have seen no preparing for any emergency contingencies.”
“A breach on the highway could prevent somebody from getting to medical care,” said Sakalay. “What else is looming on the horizon?” she wondered.
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