No beach nourishment program for Fenwick Island
FENWICK ISLAND, Del. – The town of Fenwick Island is still unable to secure a bid for a beach nourishment program, a multi-million dollar project designed to take sand that is swept away by the waves back on the beach to preserve the coastline.
“Once again Fenwick island is fending for itself we are not on the list of beach communities to get beach replenishment,” said Fenwick Island Mayor Vicki Carmean.
Carmean says that neighboring towns have already received a bid from the Army Corps of Engineers Philadelphia Branch, but this is not the first time Fenwick has been excluded from receiving the federal funds required to start the program. She tells us in the past, it has been added in at the last minute, but that has not yet happened.
Mayor Carmean tells us the nourishment is not just for aesthetics, it helps to keep the beach safe, prevents shrinking, and maintains the sand dunes that serve as the town’s only defense against big storms.
“The beach properties depend on those dunes and the beach replenishment to protect their houses during the winter storms,” Mayor Carmean says.
The mayor tells us the more sand the beach loses the more dangerous it becomes.
“It becomes very shallow and there are deep gullies in the beach where water collects it’s unsafe,” she said.
She says that could create a domino effect giving people less of a reason to visit which in turn hurts businesses.
But not everyone agrees, surfers, say replenishment can make the waters less safe by creating stronger but shorter waves due to the lack of a natural sandbar that the nourishment can create off the beach’s coast.
“Beach replenishment tends to bump the sand high then it goes out to the ocean and abruptly drops off there is no sand bar it’s just deepwater slamming on an artificial beach and it’s un-surfable,” said Fenwick Island Surf Shop owner Ken Roughton.
Roughton tells us surfers are important to his businesses but understand the need to protect local properties.
“It’s something that has to be done but it would be nice if could be manufactured in a way that the shoreline was not such an abrupt drop-off,” Roughton said.
Mayor Carmean says she hopes to compromise, but no project can happen before they get federal funding.
“We do not have the ability to fund it locally even if we raised property taxes it is just not possible we do not have the income to fund the beach replenishment ourselves,” she said adding ” I love the surfers I hope they enjoy the waves I don’t want to destroy anything they have I’m just looking for some balance here something between what they need and what we need.”
Mayor Carmean tells us with severe winter storms on the way, those could have the potential to sweep away even more of the sand and shrink the beach even faster. That’s why they say they need that renourishment program as the longer they go without the program the more time and money the project will require.
She says she is hoping to receive help from Senator Carper’s office to secure the funding.
“This happens every time there is beach replenishment, Fenwick is not on the list then somewhere along the line someone changes their mind, and we back on the list, and that’s what we are hoping for,” she said.
The Army Corps of Engineers Philidelphia branch says Fenwick is eligible for the program but has yet to receive the state and local funding to begin the process of starting the nourishment, they tell us it’s extremely unlikely that funding will be greenlit before the Summer 2022 season.
