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Prime Hook Refuge work to start in June

Molly Murray
The News Journal
Rep. John Carney looks at a bald eagle nest off Prime Hook Beach Road. He visited the area as part of a statewide, multiday tour to discuss climate change impacts.

Work to restore the marshes at Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge is expected to start June 15, the first phase in a $38 million plan to build storm and sea level rise resiliency on the 10,144-acre federal holding along Delaware Bay.

Step one will be to carve out relic drainage channels that historically allowed the marsh to drain. Once drainage is restored, 1.1 million cubic yards of sand will be pumped onto the beach just south of Fowler Beach road to fill openings that formed or were worsened during Superstorm Sandy.

A created dune will be planted with grasses to help stabilize it and allow the adjacent wetland to recover from decades of human manipulation, including 25 years where water levels were lowered and raised to accommodate wildfowl.

The marsh, despite its proximity to Delaware Bay, was maintained as a freshwater wetland. When storms broke through the dunes, it rapidly converted to a salt marsh and freshwater plants died. The marsh will be planted with salt-tolerant species.

The project is expected to last 30 years even if sea level rises 1.6 feet by mid-century as some projections suggest," said Al Rizzo, project leader for the Coastal Delaware National Wildlife Refuge Complex Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge and Prime Hook National.

Superstorm Sandy broke through the dunes in several spots south of Fowler Beach allowing daily influx of salt water from Delaware Bay. This opening is one of four that federal officials plan to fill as part of their marsh restoration project.

"We are a low-lying state," said Rep. John Carney, who toured Delaware recently to address climate change concerns and visit areas that have already been hard-hit. "What is real and what is measurable is the sea level is rising and we are low."

Among the most altered places in the state – thanks to storm damage that started with Tropical Storm Ernesto in 2006 – is Fowler Beach.

There was an extreme low tide on Thursday when Carney and officials from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service toured the area, and in the distance, a quarter-mile from the beach, the road guardrail jutted out from the peat layer. Normally, it would be underwater.

Carey made stops in Wilmington, Leipsic, Lewes and Rehoboth Beach to discuss such things as mitigation and restoration projects, the science behind climate research and issues coastal constituents have with increasing federal flood insurance rates.

With close to $40 million being spent at Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge – all of it in federal dollars – Carney said he wanted to see for himself "what's going to get done."

He said that while most current flood issues are local, there are long-term consequences for everyone.

The federal project at Prime Hook "feels like it's a solution that can be done in harmony with nature instead of fighting nature," he said.

Equipment that will be used to begin the channel work should start to arrive the first week in June with construction starting June 15, Rizzo said.

Once the marsh drainage work is complete, the second phase, expected to start in October, will be to pump in sand from a shoal just off the shore.

In all, 1.1 million cubic yards of sand will be placed along 7,000 linear feet of shoreline and to fill the deep cuts formed during storms. The deepest area just south of Fowler Beach Road is 4 to 5 feet deep, and the water has formed a tidal channel that will cut through the peat layer. Sand will fill that opening, Rizzo said.

The resulting beach will be about 120 feet wide. A 40-foot wide dune will be just to the west with additional sand west of that. The height of the dune will be 9 feet above sea level – a foot higher than flood waters during Superstorm Sandy, Rizzo said. The dune and rear platform area will be planted with beach grasses and shrubs to hold the area in place. Work is expected to be complete by April 2016, he said.

One of the first steps federal officials took to improve drainage of the Prime Hook Refuge’s marshes was to open the water-control gates.

In addition, state transportation officials plan to install a low bridge over Prime Hook Beach Road that will allow water to drain beneath it. That should also improve the movement of water through the marsh areas and reduce flooding, Rizzo said.

With the beach and dune restoration, the idea is to get a cushion that will allow vegetation to recover in the adjacent marsh, he said. Once that happens, federal officials plan to allow the beach to migrate back over the marsh as sea level rises and as storms cause erosion.

"The wild card ... is the severity of the storms ... and the frequency," Carney said.

But Rizzo said while "nobody can say for sure," federal officials believe the restoration project will provide the most resilient shoreline and marsh possible.

Reach Molly Murray at (302) 463-3334 or mmurray@delawareonline.com. Follow her on Twitter @MollyMurraytnj.