U.S. Senator Carper wants to bring more support to DE beaches to help storm recovery

DELAWARE– Recent Nor’easter storms didn’t go easy on areas along Delaware beaches, leaving places like South Bethany with a lot of lost sand.

“We are concerned the summer season starts in 12 days,” South Bethany Mayor, Tim Saxton, said.

“The reality of it is there’s a thing called climate change and we are seeing the impacts here in Delaware, we are the lowest lying state in the nation,” Shawn Garvin, the Secretary of the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control, said. “People saw a lot of rain come in over the weekend, what they didn’t know or notice is that storm parked out off shore and gave us another 4 or 5 days of winds and waves.”

Those storms also created beach access issues making drop offs at the dunes and unsafe passage ways for residents and visitors.

“We are going to try to figure out how we get people back on the beach but it’s not going to look like the beach that they are used to seeing,” Secretary Garvin said.

With storms hitting these beaches, U.S. Senator Tom Carper said leaders at every level have come together to procure funding in order to address problems they’re seeing. And, he’s hoping recently introduced legislation, called the Water Resources Development Act, could help Delaware beaches weather the storms even more by providing support during a nor’easter.

“We are nourishing the beaches, we are rebuilding the dunes that’s all well and good, but we are going to come back and help repair these beaches,” U.S. Senator Tom Carper said. “But, if that’s all we do next year, the year after that we are going to have to come back again.”

“If we have a hurricane, then we have access to the federal money,” Senator Carper said. “If it’s a bad nor’easter, we don’t have access to that money.”

But as of right now, with Memorial Day and summer fast approaching, we’re told major priorities are creating safe beach access and getting more sand on these beaches.

“Most of the times we rely on Mother Nature to do a lot of the heavy lifting in restoring the coastline,” Secretary Garvin said. “We have a lot of sand lost here and so it’s going to take her some time to do it and so we are working on seeing how can we get people back on the beach.”

To learn more about the act, click here.