DNREC celebrates Earth Day with beach cleanup event

REHOBOTH, Del. – The Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control (DNREC) celebrated Earth Day in their own way.

On March 26th at the Indian River Inlet, a storm breached one of the dunes, flooding Route 1. While work continues to be done in order to restore the dune and protect the coastal highway, DNREC Cabinet Secretary Shawn Garvin and his team were out at the beach for a different reason.

In celebration of Earth Day, members of DNREC got out from behind their desks and got their feet wet, spending the afternoon on the beach picking up trash and debris from an old roadway. “Our volunteers and staff have been at this for almost a year, but we still found some sizable chunks on the beach. So we’re really happy to be out here and giving back to the community,” said DNREC Chief of Staff Leslie Reese.

For DNREC, interaction and presence in the community is crucial. Secretary Garvin said that engaging with and communicating as much information as possible is key to helping protect under-served communities. Garvin said, “We talk a lot about making sure that they’re engaged in what we’re doing. And a lot of folks will refer to making sure they have a seat at the table. I maintain, because a lot of communities don’t even know there’s a table that you need to have a seat at…And the more we can get people outside and kind of really engage it, the more they understand why we’re doing the things that we that we’re doing every day.”

Bringing his attention back to the storm that breached the sand dune and led to flooding, Garvin said there will always be work to do, and it won’t be getting any easier: “[It was] not a particularly strong storm, but nonetheless, we’re seeing more frequent and stronger storms. And so our coastline is going to continue to be impacted.