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As agencies continue to assess the damage Delaware beaches took in the recent nor’easter, the state’s congressional delegation is calling for more federal money to go towards rebuilding dunes.
U.S. Sen. Chris Coons’s office announced that he would be working to secure $30 million in federal funding for replenishment to address ongoing needs.
“Delaware’s beaches are critical to our communities, our economy, and our way of life, and we need to make sure they have the resources they need to recover from this storm and prepare for the next one,” Coons said in a press release.
A spokesperson for Coons said that the $30 million figure was created after coordinating with the state’s Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control as well as Gov. Matt Meyer’s Office. They also said that it should be able to meet the state’s needs for full beach nourishment for fiscal year 2027.
Earlier this year, the state’s congressional delegation was able to secure $10 million in federal funding for replenishment projects from Cape Henlopen down to Fenwick Island. They are working with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on making the funding available as soon as possible.
“We’re kind of hopeful we could do more than one beach, and whatever the next one is, but now we’ve got this emergency response that is layered into that,” said DNREC Secretary Greg Patterson. “All of these things are going to come together and we’re going to have to figure out what the right and affordable path forward is in the next couple of years in the next ocean beach project.”
According to Patterson, heavily depleted beaches will take more time to fix and will need federal assistance. Those beaches, like Dewey Beach, Bethany Beach and South Bethany, are being actively assessed by DNREC and their partners with the Army Corps.
Dunes are designed to protect communities from the severe impacts of the storm. State and federal officials said that the dunes in the recent storm did their job.
“The dune and beaches are really designed to take the brunt of the impact from storms, and so having them absorb that energy from waves and other impacts rather than the infrastructure behind them, that’s the purpose of these projects,” said Steve Rochette, spokesperson for the Philadelphia District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. “In Delaware, we have a lot of infrastructure, roads, boardwalks, homes, businesses, utility lines. All of those things are vulnerable and the projects are really designed to take that impact and be sacrificial in nature.”
The beaches along Delaware’s Atlantic Coast have constructed dunes that were put in place in the mid-2000s.
