Delaware Beach Projects
Hurts Surfing 0
DEWEY BEACH — Area water sport fanatics say ongoing beach renourishment projects are negatively affecting the shore breaks.
“Last time (a renourishment took place) it really messed up the beach. You couldn’t really even boogie board in town. There was such a deep drop-off … the waves would break right on the beach,” said Matt Ramsey, one of the managers at East of Maui in Dewey Beach. “I haven’t noticed a problem this time yet, but they’re not finished. Who knows? It could be better, worse or the same.”
Tim Cotter, who works part-time at Alley Oop Skim in Dewey Beach, said he has noticed a change for the worse.
“There’s always a difference,” he said. “I think this is the second time they’ve done it, and just recently I think the surf was getting back to normal, gradual, slow drop-off … now it’s deteriorating again.”
Cotter said the conditions can make for “uncomfortable” skim boarding and send people south in search of better waves, like those in Ocean City.
“I’d rather go surf on the beaches they haven’t tampered with,” he said.
But Tony Pratt, shoreline administrator for the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control, claims the renourishment efforts are not to blame.
“To say there’s not good surfing right now because of the beach renourishment would be misleading,” he said. “Because Delaware has never been a great spot for surfing… Fenwick Island is really the exception.”
Pratt said as a child in the 1960s and ’70s, he often went to Ocean City seeking out good surf waves.
“People complain about this now, as a result of the projects, but I don’t know how valid their complaints are,” he said. “People surf on many beaches that have been renourished across the nation.”
Dewey’s beach replenishment recently kicked off and is expected to last another four to five weeks. The estimated $6 million project was postponed earlier this year due to inclement weather.
Crews will next move south to Bethany Beach to begin pumping sand and patching up the storm-damaged beach there, officials said.
Sections of beach in each community will be closed to public access while crews are working, Pratt said.
According to Pratt, a floating hopper dredge is collecting sand in 10,000 cubic yard increments from more than two miles off the coast of Fenwick Island. That sand is then pumped onto Dewey’s shoreline.
“It’s designed so that the material will be pumped through a buoy to add height and width to the beachfront,” he said. “This will be replacing the sand lost to erosion over time.”
After Dewey, workers will pump 200,000 cubic yards of sand onto the shore in Bethany Beach. That $2.25 million project is slated to finish toward the end of the month.
