Dunes washed away; bayshore beaches flooded

Delaware's sand-enriched beaches from Lewes to Fenwick Island took a whipping Friday night through Sunday morning, flattening and wiping away dunes. The ones that remained looked like a giant front-end loader came through and scooped off the face, leaving a jagged series of cliffs.

Sand fencing lay crumpled like the tracks from a derelict roller coaster. And in Rehoboth, the boardwalk buckled in places from the force of waves pounding the boards from the bottom up. A frosting of sand an inch thick covered the popular attraction at the end of Rehoboth Avenue.

The shoreline destruction was coastwide and included extensive bayshore flooding.

It makes "us very, very vulnerable," said Anthony Pratt, the state shoreline and waterway administrator.

The tally is bad: Gone is the entire dune at the north end of Rehoboth's Boardwalk. The dune was also flattened at the south ends of Bethany Beach and nearby South Bethany. Along the remaining ocean coast, Pratt said, about 20 miles' worth of dunes have been badly damaged. Delaware's ocean coast spans 24 miles total.

How bad the damage is further north along Delaware Bay north of Lewes is still a question. Extreme flooding of roadways to many of the Delaware Bay beaches kept state assessment crews out even after the weather cleared on Sunday morning.

"We haven't been able to get through to the bay beaches," said David Small, secretary of the state Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control.

Small, who flew the coast Sunday afternoon with Gov. Jack Markell, and worked for many years as a reporter and editor covering coastal storms, said "the flight over was amazing" because the marshes on the back side of Delaware Bay communities were so full of water.

Without the marshes, he said, "I can't imagine where all that water would be."

Small said as soon as the water levels drop and roads become passable, assessment crews will begin looking at bayshore damage.

The state and federal government have invested more than $100 million over the last 15 years to pump sand onto the state's ocean beaches and build manmade dunes. The most recent beach repairs along the ocean coast were paid with Hurricane Sandy Relief dollars. The federal government footed the entire bill for restoring beaches and rebuilding dunes along the public ocean beaches following the Oct. 29, 2012, storm.

Multimillion-dollar federal projects at Broadkill Beach and Fowler Beach are underway. Both are designed to build storm-resilience. There was no word Sunday on how those projects held up.

The big questions Sunday weren't just the loss of dunes and sand and how to pay to repair the damage. The other big if was how developed cities like Rehoboth and Bethany beaches would have fared without the robust beaches and dunes.

"This boardwalk would have been gone," Pratt said as he stood at Bethany Beach. "I think it's been a good investment even though it has been expensive."

Pratt need only think back to another significant winter storm in January 1992. It was a fast-moving nor'easter that ripped away sections of boardwalks both in Rehoboth and Bethany Beach.

Neither community had a robust dune. Worse yet was the damage in South Bethany, where dozens of oceanfront homes lost decks and steps and the street behind them was a mass of rubble. Water and sewer lines snapped from the power of the waves.

There was so much shoreline erosion from that storm that state officials launched an in-house, large-scale renourishment program to bolster the beach and dunes. Later, the state partnered with the Army Corps of Engineers to do more widescale repairs and restoration. The state pays 35 percent of the cost. The federal government pays the balance on those projects with a 50-year commitment for federal aid.

Pratt wasn't the only one Sunday who saw the value in the investment of sand.

"I would think the whole north end of the boardwalk would be destroyed without the beach renourishment," said Rehoboth Beach Mayor Sam Cooper.

It was the dune that protected much of the boardwalk from significant damage, he said.

When it was swept away – in many places the sand ended up on top of the structure – waves rushed under and pounded the boards from the bottom up.

After the January 1992 storm, the boardwalk was redesigned so that if the dunes were gone, waves would wash underneath and pop the boards up rather than pound over the top, crushing the structure. The damage is easier to repair and it minimizes property losses at adjacent businesses and homes.

Rehoboth and Dewey are on schedule to receive routine beach repairs as part of the state-federal partnership later this year. But Bethany and South Bethany aren't set for a repair until 2017.

Pratt said because the entire shoreline is so vulnerable, state crews will push sand up the beach to begin forming a new dune as soon as sand moves back to the shore. Typically during major storms, sand from the beach forms a bar just offshore. That bar helps to dampen the waves before they hit the beach and do more damage. In calmer weather, some of the sand is transported back onto the beach by waves.

Markell said he and his staff are assessing all of the damage from this storm to determine if a request for federal disaster assistance is in order.

But the reality is that for Sussex County, the dune and shoreline damage alone may not be significant enough to qualify, Pratt said. Typically, there is also damage to public infrastructure such as roads, bridges and power lines necessary. Those types of damages didn't seem to be an issue in this storm, he said.

Still, all along the Delaware coast there was significant dune damage and areas where the ocean washed through to Del. 1, pushing a field of crumpled, tangled sand fencing and other debris.

Del. 1 from Dewey Beach south was still closed much of the day on Sunday while state transportation department crews worked to remove debris and sand. Water levels from Rehoboth Bay receded throughout the day. In Bethany Beach, Lewes and along the Delaware Inland Bays, many streets were still flooded and impassable.

The same was true of communities along Delaware Bay. The worst of the three high tides was Saturday morning, when, based on preliminary data, it came close to reaching a record 9.2 feet set in March 1962. Preliminary data recorded a high tide of 9.15 feet at Lewes Breakwater Harbor at 1 p.m. Saturday.

Preston Lee, who lives on Delmar Avenue on the beach side of Lewes, evacuated Saturday. There was 30 inches of water in the lower garage area of his home, he said.

He returned Sunday morning and said "there's still about 6 inches in our lower level."

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During Superstorm Sandy in 2012, the water rose to 22 inches in the garage area, he said.

"This flooding is worse than Sandy," he said.

In Rehoboth, dozens of people walked the boardwalk and surveyed the damage Sunday.

Dave and Connie Tredinnick, who have a part-time home in Rehoboth, were among them.

"It's sad," Connie Tredinnick said, adding that at the north end of the boardwalk, "there's no dune at all."

"That's the big devastation," she said.

Connie Tredinnick said she does the annual Polar Bear plunge for Special Olympics, set for Feb. 7, and she worried Sunday whether it would even be possible.

There was so much debris in the water and so little beach to plunge from, she said.

Don Burdick of Millsboro drove over to Rehoboth to see the damage.

"I think it's absolutely astounding, just the destruction of the dunes," he said.

A friend with Burdick kicked the surface of the boardwalk to reveal a thick layer of sand.

"There's the beach," he said.

Angela Wilson lives at Long Neck now but she grew up in Rehoboth and has witnessed many storms.

"I've seen lots of hurricanes and nor'easters, and I've never seen the beach this beat up," she said.

To the south, in Bethany, the damage was no less dramatic.

U.S. Sen. Tom Carper, who with Markell and U.S. Rep. John Carney, visited the town Sunday afternoon said the loss of so much sand is "very dispiriting" but, he said it is all about the property protection that sand provided during this storm.

"It's not just beach renourishment," Carney said. "It's property protection."

Cathy and Bud Davis, who live in Bethany West, surveyed the damage Sunday, too.

Cathy Davis said she admits she was one of the people who complained about the height of the dune in Bethany Beach when it was being constructed.

Not this weekend.

"I was shocked when I came down Saturday, she said. "Thank God we've got 'em," she said of the dunes.

Several state lawmakers, Rep. Ron Gray, R-Millville, and Speaker of the House Pete Schwartzkopf, D-Rehoboth Beach, and Sen. Gerald Hocker, R-Ocean View, are former Bethany Beach lifeguards.

Each agreed that the dunes made a huge difference during this storm.

"Those dunes saved us," Hocker said.

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