Molly Murray

The News Journal

Over 24 hours last weekend, Delaware lost tens of millions of dollars worth of sand on beaches from Rehoboth to Fenwick Island, sand that was purchased by all of us.

Much of the $30 million pumped on the shoreline in 2013, a year after Superstorm Sandy – enough sand to fill more than 350,000 full-sized pickup trucks – is gone.

This is not a new story in Delaware. Since 1988, when state officials jumped into the coastal pool as a beach renourishment player, millions more cubic yards of sand were pumped in, lost and restored.

The state paid its own way in this multi-million-dollar coastal gamble, one fueled by the uncertainty of the path of hurricanes and the relentless pounding from fall and winter nor'easters, until the first federal cost-share projects began in coastal towns in 2005.

It is a risk state officials have been willing to take, especially now with the federal government paying 65 percent of the cost. They argue lost sand is better than lost buildings, roads and lives and a wide beach fuels the state's multi-million tourism economy in an age where one storm like Sandy can cause a seismic shift in where vacationers plant their beach chairs each summer.

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After Sandy, Delaware resorts saw more tourists from New York and New Jersey than ever before, a trend that continues.

After last weekend's coastal storm, Delaware's treasured ocean beaches are exposed again. And state officials find themselves in a familiar predicament: Figuring out how to rebuild the coastline to protect resort communities.

"We are coming upon a crossroads here in Delaware," said State Environmental Secretary David Small. "Our local share is defined by state matching dollars. I'm not sure that that's a model even in the near term that is sustainable."

Last weekend's storm was one of those rare coastal tipping points in Delaware. It hit with so much power, it reshaped shorelines from Pickering Beach along Delaware Bay south to Fenwick Island along the ocean. The cost of repairs may be too much for the state to handle given other infrastructure needs, Small said.

In some places along Delaware Bay, it was days after the storm before water levels subsided enough that state assessment crews could even gauge the impact. Some of the most extensive damage occurred on privately owned beaches where no state or federal help is available.

Anthony P. Pratt, the state shoreline and waterway manager, said his office fielded calls all week from people in shore towns, public and private. They need help with everything from moving sand to clearing debris.

State Sen. Ernie Lopez, R-Lewes, who represents coastal communities from Lewes south to Indian River Inlet, said he believes most Delawareans have no idea of "the severe damage that was done."

Besides the discussion on how to pay, there may be a more difficult question to discuss: When, and where, can we walk away and let nature take its course.

"This is where retreat comes in," said Orrin Pilkey, Professor Emeritus of Earth and Ocean Sciences at Duke University's Nicholas School of the Environment.

More than a decade ago, coastal geologist Stephen Leatherman, better known as "Dr. Beach" for his annual best beaches ranking, looked at the durability of renourished beaches. He found that 26 percent of renourished beaches disappear in less than a year; 62 percent last 2 to 5 years and 12 percent last more than 5 years. On average, he found a one- to three-year lifespan of renourished shorelines in Maryland, Delaware and New Jersey.

Pilkey, who has a new book on retreat coming out this spring, said there is an idea that a property is "too big to flood," meaning that the more tall buildings and infrastructure you have along a shoreline, the harder it is to walk away.

"Once high-rises come in, there is nothing you can do," he said. How, he asked, can you retreat in a place like Fort Lauderdale or Miami Beach where there are high rises and hotels all along the shoreline.

"I fear that there is nothing that can be done," he said. "But in Delaware, it's not hopeless like it is in Florida."

Like Leatherman's research, Pilkey said there are significant problems with renourished beaches.

"They disappear much faster than natural beaches," he said. "At least two times faster."

After last weekend's storm, Bethany Beach surfer Jim McGrath said he feels like it's his right to say: "I told you so."

He's warned everyone who would listen that "when the right storm comes along, your dune is going to be gone in two hours."

And that, he suggested, is what happened with this storm.

That $30 million in free sand from the Hurricane Sandy Relief money "is basically gone in 24 hours," he said.

His contends that after Sandy, Delaware's ocean coast didn't really need the sand but "they got $30 million bucks and it's all gone."

The reality, he said, is that sand pumping will continue in Delaware until "somebody says: 'I ain't paying for it anymore.' "

It was a depressing sight for the hundreds of visitors who drove into Rehoboth Beach Sunday, many with smart phones and tablets to chronicle the destruction. It was a beach many has never seen before – flat, no dune at the north end of the boardwalk, and waves lapping just feet from the boardwalk.

"It's sad," said Connie Tredinnick, who lives part time in Rehoboth Beach. "There's no dune at all. That's the biggest devastation."

Yet Lopez and others considered the coastal communities lucky.

"Those dunes saved us," said Sen. Gerald Hocker, R-Ocean View.

Delaware officials have known they had a problem with eroding beaches for decades.

In the late 1950s, the Army Corps of Engineers looked at Delaware's ocean coast and identified problem areas such as the north side of Indian River Inlet. The plan was to strategically place sand on key areas of beach and allow it to migrate along the shoreline with the natural movement of sand.

That sand project never happened and then, the March Storm of 1962 hit. From North Carolina to New Jersey, dunes were flattened and houses were destroyed. Along the Delaware Coast, the ocean met the inland bays from Dewey Beach south to Fenwick Island. Delaware Bay overwashed the beach and every community from Woodland Beach south was flooded. Six people died in Kent County when they were caught in the storm surge of rapidly rising waters.

By the numbers, the Jan. 22-23 storm brought a slightly higher, high tide at Lewes Breakwater Harbor if the preliminary data holds. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration tide gauge at Lewes Break water Harbor measured a peak high tide Saturday morning, Jan. 23 of 9.23 feet. The peak during the March Storm there was 9.2.

For many, this coastal damage was the worst they have ever seen but for lifelong residents like Hocker and Rehoboth Beach Mayor Samuel Cooper, it is hard to believe the tide bested 1962. The damage then – from homes washed away and crushed, to flooding to vast expanses of sand filling cottages -- is etched in the collective memories of Delawareans who remember the storm.

Cooper recalled the story the late Virdin Marshall told of going to sleep at his home off Old Landing Road thinking everything would be fine and waking up to 30 inches of water in the first floor of his home.

"I remember talking to Phil Short," the late south coastal real estate developer who was living at a home he built on the bayside at Cotton Patch Hills north of Bethany Beach.

Cooper said Short told him he was out on the highway now known as Del. 1 up to his chest in flood waters.

"I find it hard to believe" that the tide was as high in this storm, Cooper said. March 1962 went on for three days, he recalled.

As to this storm, "If Sunday would have been like Saturday, it would have been a whole different picture" with much, much worse damage.

Hocker was a junior high school student at the time and he remembers the flooding at his grandparents home. It stood on the land where the Catholic Church parsonage is today. There were four steps up to get to the house, he said.

But during the March Storm of 1962, there was water on the first floor of that house, about three miles west of the ocean at Bethany Beach.

"This was nothing like '62," he said.

As the tide rose Saturday in Lewes, the gauge at Breakwater Harbor temporarily stopped recording. But there was a second gauge that continued collecting the data, said Rich Edwing, head of the NOAA Center for Operational Oceanographic Products and Services. Edwing is in charge of all of NOAA's coastal tide gauges.

Edwing said sea level is higher now at Lewes and that could be a factor. During 1962, water levels would have started at a lower point.

It turns out, water levels at the harbor would have been between 5 and 6 inches lower than they are today, based on a 3 millimeter annual rise in sea level at the location.

Over time, all the gauges are re-calibrated to reflect sea level rise, he said.

So while the height of the tide above mean low water – the number typically used to track tides over time -- was slightly higher on January 23 than in March 1962, the tide level above mean sea level was lower.

In March 1962, the highest tide was 7.9 feet above mean sea level. With this storm, it was 7.037 feet above mean sea level.

And there were likely other factors.

Delaware's beaches from Lewes to Fenwick Island weren't as robust going into the 1962 storm as they were with this storm. Rehoboth and Bethany Beach, for instance, didn't have substantial sand dunes in 1962. The duration of the 1962 storm – which lasted through five extreme high tides -- was likely a factor, too.

The 1962 storm was a tipping point in state beach management. After the storm, Delaware officials – beaches were then managed by the state Highway Department – pumped sand from Rehoboth Bay to restore some beaches and trucked in sand to others. It was the state's first big effort to restore storm-damaged beaches.

Over time, there were small projects here and there, especially along Delaware Bay.

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But the next big tipping point came with Hurricane Gloria in 1985. The storm brushed past the coast of Delaware some 35 miles east of Bethany Beach. It destroyed the boardwalks in Rehoboth and Bethany and depleted the ocean shoreline.

Every little storm that followed, increased the vulnerabilities at towns like Dewey Beach and South Bethany.

In South Bethany, waves routinely crashed under houses and repeatedly washed out Ocean Drive along with the water and sewer connections.

In Dewey Beach, the surf crashed against hotels.

In 1988-89, the state pumped $4.5 million worth of sand onto beaches from Fenwick Island to Bethany Beach. Middlesex Beach and Sea Colony piggy-backed the state-funded dredge project and paid for more sand for the two private communities.

Then, came another tipping point. The January nor'easter of 1992. Again, boardwalks in Bethany Beach and Rehoboth were badly damaged.

The summer of 1992, the state paid to pump more sand – some $2.66 million to pump sand in the same area.

More sand came in 1994 and Dewey Beach got its first transfusion of pumped sand at a cost of $2.4 million.

By then, state officials, guided by then Gov. Michael Castle's Beaches 2000 report, had concluded that beach renourishment was worth the cost. That report also suggested that Sussex County and the municipalities should contribute to the cost of the shoreline repairs.

Dewey Beach set up a beach renourishment fund which now totals over $3.6 million. Neither the county nor the other municipalities created a dedicated way for beach repairs.

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In the meantime, state lawmakers set an 8 percent accommodations tax. Part was to go to tourism development in the three counties and the rest to fund beach renourishment.

Pratt paints of bleak picture of what would have happened had the state not done something back then.

On average, Delaware's ocean beaches erode at a rate of 2 to 3 feet a year.

Cooper recalls walking down the boardwalk in the pre-renourish days and seeing people with their towels on the boardwalk because there just wasn't room on the beach for them at the north end of the city.

Without the addition of sand, there would be very little beach today at Rehoboth, Pratt said. He pictures a downward economic spiral of fewer and fewer tourists, less reinvestment in the community and a scenario he liken to a depressed Atlantic City or Miami Beach.

Without sand and a beach "it would be an impoverished Rehoboth Beach," he said.

And there would be a cascading effect all along the ocean coast.

"The basis of tourism is gone," Pratt said. "We see an economic decline."

And people who used to spend $300 a night or more for a stay in an ocean front hotel in Rehoboth during the peak season spend less, way less without a beach, he said.

"That's the scary scenario," Pratt said.

In the end, the beach is what draws millions of tourists to Delaware each year and billions of dollars in spending and investment.

"Just think about the secondary and tertiary impacts of that," Small said.

And think about this storm. Without sand, a place like South Bethany would have had almost no beach or dune left because with "this same storm 13 years ago, we would be talking about half of Ocean Drive gone," Pratt said.

This time, there was one area where the dune was washed away and many other places where the ocean waves chopped better that half of it off. There is a step drop to the beach now but there is still a beach.

Delaware winter storms

Five days before it started snowing in Lewes, forecasters with the National Weather Service began watching a storm system brewing in the Ohio Valley. The monster snow storms of the Mid-Atlantic typically form there or in the Gulf of Mexico. It looked like a big snow was possible but it was days away. Forecasting snow is notoriously difficult in the region because a matter of miles can mean the difference between a dusting and a disaster.

As the week went on, something interesting happened. Forecasters use models to develop their weather predictions.And those models all pointed to the same conclusion: A major snow storm was headed to the MidAtlantic.

Louis Uccellini, director of the National Weather Service, hosted a press briefing Thursday, January 22. Uccellini and colleague Paul Kocin are experts on Atlantic Coast winter storms and developed a ranking system for them similar to the Saffir-Simpson Scale used to rank hurricanes. Uccellini described this one as "a potentially paralyzing storm. . . It's not just snow we need to pay attention to," he warned. "This is a multi-faceted storm.'

Weather service forecasters reached out to local officials and emergency planners. Among their concerns: high tides, flooding, strong winds and coastal erosion. Along the Delaware and Maryland coast, snow would fall, switch to rain and be accompanied by strong north and northeast winds. The strength would be great as an intense low pressure system off the coast of North Carolina collided with high pressure over Eastern Canada. The collision between warm, moist air and arctic cold would form gale force winds and near hurricane force gusts along the coast.

By noon on Saturday, tides along the Delaware Bay coast were high -- so high that at Lewes, it cracked the record high tide of 9.2 feet set during the March Storm of 1962. Preliminary data measured the highest tide at 9.232 feet. A peak gust there topped 67 miles per hour with sustained winds of 40 to 50 miles per hour during the worst of the storm. roofing shingles and siding blew off houses, limbs and branches snapped. Lewes Mayor Ted Becker went out early Saturday morning to check water levels along the Lewes & Rehoboth Canal.

"I'm a big guy," he said. But the wind was so strong, he said, he could hardly walk.

The inches of snow that fell in Lewes before switching to rain early Saturday morning blew and drifted and on the beach turned into a tan mixture of drifting snow and sand. The municipal parking lot was covered in so much sand, it was impassable and took crews using heavy equipment to plow it and move it back to the beach. Power went out. By the morning high tide, the water in Lewes & Rehoboth Canal rose and rose, flooding Canal Front Park, and many of the city streets on the beach. Cedar Avenue.

Preston Lee decided it was time to leave when the lower, garage area of his elevated home on Delmar Avenue near the Lewes & Rehoboth Canal on the beach side of Lewes began to fill with water.

"There were 30 inches of water in our lower level, he said. "Our front yard is elevation 4" feet above sea level.

To put that in perspective, Lee said, that during Hurricane Sandy, the water in the lower level rose to 22 inches.

Meanwhile, in Rehoboth Beach, enormous ocean waves slammed the beach.

As the beach area struggled with wind, flooding and each erosion, the rest of the state coped with snow -- in some areas more than a foot of snow.

In the National Weather Service's ranking of winter storms, this one was a category 4, "crippling," and the fourth worst the region had ever seen. The only thing worse: a category 5 There have been two of those storms in the Northeast:extreme snow events in February 1969 and March 1993.

While much of Delaware shoveled snow, coastal communities assessed the destruction.

Over the course of 24 hours from Saturday, Jan. 23 through Sunday morning Jan. 24, much of the millions of cubic yards of sand restored in 2013 with federal dollars from the Hurricane Sandy relief initiative and the dues that had been created through a decade of previous beach restoration work were destroyed or badly damaged.

Once again, Delaware is at a tipping point and the debate will likely revolve around the cost of beach repairs and whether there are some places along the shoreline where retreat is a viable option.

"The ocean coast line is a gold coast for Delaware," Small said. "The value of that area continues to grow." And he said that tourism driver – along with the influx of more and more retirees and the housing market they support – continues to grow and is driven by access to the beach.

But, he said, some places along the Delaware Bay shore are less driven by tourism than by the ecological value.

Small said the idea of retreat from some of the most vulnerable areas along the Delaware Bayshore is a difficult discussion because for many, it is their beach and their home.

But he said, "it's time to have this conversation" both about where to invest and how to pay for it.

The damage at Rehoboth Beach alone is far more extensive than the typical routine beach maintenance that was envisioned with the 50-year beach renourishment projects that Delaware officials signed up for. And there is extensive damage to the south where the next round of repairs are set for 2017.

Rehoboth and Dewey beaches are up for routine federal maintenance this year. And as part of that, if the federal dollars are available, the state will pay 35 percent of the costs.

"We will be pressed in the near term to met our federal obligation," Small said.

In Bethany Beach, Mayor Jack Gordon is hoping to piggyback the Rehoboth-Dewey project and get sand to hold them over and restore the losses there.

An October nor'easter chopped away about half of the dune there. This storm left about one-third of what remained at the north end of town and washed it all away at the south end.

Gordon is just hoping the community can get through this winter and spring without another nor'easter.

"We certainly need some renourishment here," he said.

On one topic, everyone agrees. Right now, the Delaware Coastline. All of it is extremely vulnerable.

The cost of mobilizing dredge crews and pumping sand has risen as more and more coastal communities from New York to Florida have signed on to sand pumping as a way to hold back sea level rise and routine coastal erosion.

At Broadkill Beach, where the new dune and beach survived the storm, the project was delayed by more than a year because there wasn't a dredge company willing to bid on the job.

With more work, and more options for dredge operators, the cost is likely to continue to rise.

Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., said the money for periodic repair at Dewey and Rehoboth has already been budgeted and shouldn’t be a problem this year.

But he warned that “the demand for Army Corps work and support exceeds” what is available.

And from the damage he saw along the Delaware coast after this storm, he said “these are not going to be small amounts of money” for the upcoming periodic renourishment needs in Rehoboth and Dewey beaches.

Carper is a believer in beach renourishment.

"We were all saddened to see the dunes eroded," he said, "But those dunes did their job. They protected the towns."

There was, he said, no loss of roads or buildings because the dunes were there. And some of that missing sand is just off the beach and once it starts moving back in, state crews will be able to move it and build some type of dune protection.

That said, Carper is also a realist.

With beach renourishment, "we are addressing a symptoms of the problem," he said. "That's not a good situation."

The underlying cause of shoreline loss is sea level rise, he said.

That bigger problem is something people need to never forget and policies need to be in place to address it, he said.

Lopez said that the discussion about who pays and how much needs to include local officials and not be a discussion that just takes place at a state level.

Small said that he and his staff, prior to the storm, started talking to some local officials about a local contribution to beach renourishment.

But just as money is in short supply at a state level, so it is at a federal one.

Cooper said that at League of Local Government meetings there has been discussion about municipalities charging an accommodations tax on top of the state's 8-percent.

Dewey Beach charges a 3-percent tax but it only applies to rentals and not hotel and motel rooms, said Mayor Diane Hanson.

In some tourist areas like Dade County in Florida, the accommodations tax adds 13 percent to the cost of a motel room.

Such a local tax might be one way municipalities could come up with their share of a beach repair fund, Small said.

And for the last few years, there has been talk in Legislative Hall of a short-term accommodations tax for coastal rentals, said F. Gary Simpson, R-Milford, who represents several Delaware Bay communities.

The idea would be to target the folks who rent beach houses and cottages, he said,

"I think it's a viable source of revenue," he said.

After this storm, Small said, there needs to be a statewide conversion on beach funding.

"One conversation is about a local share," he said. "The other part of the conversation is about a state share."

But perhaps the most difficult conversation will be where to continue to renourish and where to walk away, he said.

Small didn't mention any specific places where costs of renourishment might outweigh benefits. That is, he said, difficult to assess because of the many ecological benefits along the Delaware Bay.

But the simple fact is, that along the Delaware Bayshore, the tourism drivers aren't the same as along the ocean coast, he said.

"That's a reality," Small said. "But it's also a reality those are people's homes."

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