On the approach to Prime Hook Beach, the first thing you notice is how close you are to the water.
It laps at both edges of a thin ribbon of road that winds between two large coastal ponds called impoundments, threatening to swallow the pavement no more than a foot or two above it.
Newly paved sections of the approximately mile-long road show that the water can and does rise over the blacktop, requiring frequent closures and repairs. Lines of reed fragments in the gravel along the road signal the latest high-water mark.
At the eastern end of Prime Hook Road, about five miles east of Route 1, lies Prime Hook Beach, a community of around 200 homes perched on a sliver of land between Delaware Bay and the two impoundments created by the Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge starting in the 1960s to attract migratory birds.
It was once an idyllic setting, offering the community’s retirees and weekenders a peaceful haven with instant access to the bay beach on one side and serene views over a waterscape filled with ducks and shorebirds on the other.
[caption id="attachment_24789" align="alignright" width="300" caption="An example of flooding at Prime Hook Beach. This photo was taken following the Nor'easter that passed through the area on Halloween weekend 2011. (Photo courtesy: Cindy Miller)"]
But in the last six years, residents have been increasingly menaced by rising waters in one of the impoundments as flows from the bay sweep in on high tides, northeast winds, and major storms, flooding houses and yards, killing trees that can’t live in salt water, and devastating real estate values.
The culprits, residents say, are breaches in the dunes that were broken open by a series of storms starting in 2006. The breaches, about a mile north of town, have become bigger and more numerous since then, inviting a growing influx of seawater that threatens the community.
The damage to homes and spirits could have been avoided, the homeowners say, if state and federal governments had acted quickly to plug the holes in the dunes when they first appeared.
But since 2007, efforts to hold back the ocean waters have been prevented by litigation, scientific studies and bureaucratic delays.
WORK STOPPED
In the spring of 2010, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which owns the refuge, stopped repair work on the dunes. The Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control was preparing to do the work on behalf of the federal agency, and had workers in place, gathering sand to repair the biggest breach. However, the federal agency said work had to stop until it could do an environmental assessment to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act.
When the environmental survey was complete, DNREC crews returned in the fall of 2011 and closed all the breaches but didn’t have enough sand on site to do the work in a way that would permanently hold back the bay waters. Their work was undone by natural forces within a couple of months, said Tony Pratt, administrator of DNREC’s Shoreline and Waterway Management section. The impoundment, originally a freshwater body, is now increasingly saline.
[caption id="attachment_24787" align="alignright" width="300" caption="The remains of a observation stand near the breached dune at Fowler Beach. When the stand was built in 2006, it stood behind the dunes. (DFM News photo)"]
Pratt said the only sustainable repair to the breaches would require an estimated 300,000-500,000 cubic yards of sand, or many thousands of trucks’ worth. The only feasible way to deliver that would be with a dredger pumping sand onto the dunes.
An earlier delay was caused by a lawsuit from the nonprofit Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility and the Delaware Audubon Society who together sought to stop the dune work, arguing that it violated the National Environmental Policy Act, which requires a full environmental review of any significant federal actions such as shoring up the dunes at Prime Hook.
The plaintiffs lost the suit in September 2011 when a federal magistrate ruled that they should defer to the professional judgment of refuge managers. But they claimed vindication when natural forces overcame DNREC's attempts to build up the dunes last fall.
Now, the work is blocked pending the outcome of a federally-mandated Comprehensive Conservation Plan, a blueprint by the FWS for the future of the Prime Hook preserve. It was first scheduled for release in 2007 but is now not expected to be complete until the end of this year.
DELEGATION QUESTIONS THE DELAY
The extraordinary five-year delay prompted a letter from Delaware’s Congressional Delegation to U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar on March 20, urging him to expedite the process so that the work can finally be done.
[caption id="attachment_24786" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Click to see a satellite view of where the dune breaches at Prime Hook are in relation to the Prime Hook Beach community."]
“The original goal of the Service was to release a draft plan in the summer of 2007 and yet as we approach the summer of 2012, we find ourselves sympathetic to the many frustrated neighbors, state officials and interested parties who have yet to review even a draft plan,” Delaware’s U.S. Senators, Tom Carper and Chris Coons, and Representative, John Carney, said in the letter. (Read full letter here)
They noted that dunes have been breached, Prime Hook Beach and natural habitats have been flooded, and marshes have been damaged by the delay. “Time is of the essence in moving forward with a plan for this Refuge,” the Delegation wrote. “Efforts to develop short or long-term plans to manage these ecological changes have been stymied by the delay in releasing the CCP.”
The Interior Department is expected to respond to the letter in the “near future,” according to a Senate source.
Gov. Jack Markell has also written to Secretary Salazar urging "federal intercession" on the Prime Hook issue, but there had been no response by March 28, said Markell's spokesman, Brian Selander. "It's rare that a local issue gets elevated to this level," Selander said.
A LOSING BATTLE
Prime Hook
Prime Hook Beach resident Diane McConnell explains how the flooding has affected her and her community
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For Diane McConnell, a retiree who lives year-round on the impoundment side of Prime Hook Beach, the frequent flooding of her house and land has cost thousands of dollars in repairs and efforts to hold back the rising waters. Among her recent bills was $14,000 for a new septic system to replace one that got flooded out during Hurricane Irene in 2011, and $8,500 on a stone wall to build up the yard between her home and the impoundment.
McConnell, 68, believes her home’s exposure to the flooding has wiped out its market value. She has been trying to sell for the last 18 months but has had only one person come to view, and no offers.
She blames state and federal authorities for failing to plug the breaches in the dunes.
“My entire life savings is gone because the government didn’t fix something when they should have,” she said. “All of us here know there is a very good probability that we will die here because we can’t sell these houses. We can’t leave.”
McConnell evacuated during Hurricane Irene and returned home to find 17 inches of water in her home, ruining her HVAC system, her washing machine and a collection of family photographs.
Although the damage is not as severe with a regular northeast wind or a high tide, the waters from the impoundment still regularly spread over her property line under those conditions, and may rise over the road, making it impossible to get out of Prime Hook Beach under all but the most severe conditions.
“You don’t know if you can get out and if you can get out you don’t know if you can get back in,” she said.
The road has been destroyed by storms three times, most recently in October last year, said Cindy Miller, chair of the Prime Hook Beach Organization, a community group.
[caption id="attachment_24788" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Prime Hook Road floods regularly. This instance occurred on an overcast, windy day in late January 2012. Under a half inch of rain fell the day before. (Photo courtesy: Cindy Miller)"]
Road flooding normally means people simply can’t leave town and have to wait for the waters to recede. There is a possible second exit through a gated community on the southern end of Prime Hook Beach but residents there don’t allow traffic, and have blocked access from the north with a fence and a pile of rubble.
Prime Hook Beach residents were allowed to use that exit during Hurricane Irene, but only after permission from Governor Jack Markell, and an escort from the National Guard, Miller said.
The community’s vulnerability to the rising waters isn’t surprising given that the center of town – a crossroads known simply as “the intersection” is just seven feet above sea level. Along Shore Drive, the main street, “For Sale” signs are conspicuous in both directions.
“No house has sold in two years,” said Miller, a community college lecturer who lives in Virginia during the week and travels at weekends to her house at Prime Hook, across the street from McConnell.
FARMS ALSO AT RISK
Nearby, farmers are losing arable land to salt-water flooding, as well as income from the crops that can no longer be grown there.
George Carey, who grows corn and soybeans on 900 acres at Slaughter Neck near the Prime Hook preserve, estimates 10 acres of his land is now unusable and a further five to six acres is marginal because of regular flooding from the breaches.
If it wasn’t being flooded by seawater, the land would be worth about $5,000 an acre but it’s now worthless, he said. In addition, he’s losing about $5,000 a year in income from growing corn.
Carey, 83, a former state Representative who has farmed the land all his life, also laments the loss of mature trees, including maples that can’t live in ground contaminated by saltwater and scar the landscape as they die. “It’s like a war zone,” he said.
Carey’s neighbor Steve Bennett, who farms 160 acres on the north side of the Prime Hook refuge, said he lost about $3,000 in income from reduced corn and soybean production last year because of the flooding, and worries he’s going to lose more land if the flooding increases.
“There’s six or seven acres that I don’t think will grow anything this year,” he said. “Am I going to lose half the farm?”
Bennett said the problem has been worsening as the breaches have widened, and he now fears the consequences of weather that would once have been no concern. “Over the last two years, I have seen such an increase in water coming in over the marsh,” he said. “If we get two or three days of hard east wind, I have got water all over the place.”
Some farmers are digging ditches and building walls in an attempt to keep the water off their land, said State Representative Harvey Kenton, whose district includes the area around Prime Hook Refuge. He has been urging the Fish & Wildlife Service to quickly complete its plan for the refuge so that remedies can be put in place.
“They deserve some protection,” Kenton said of the farmers.
SEA LEVEL IS RISING
Residents and farmers blame the flooding squarely on the dune breaches rather than on the longer-term prospect of sea-level rise. But the reality of rising seas is contributing to the problems at Prime Hook and some other locations on the Delaware coast, according to David Carter, Environmental Program Manager at Delaware Coastal Programs, a unit of DNREC.
The sea level off Delaware is rising by about a foot a century and has probably risen by seven or eight inches in the years since the Prime Hook Beach community began, Carter said. Rising seas have likely accelerated the erosion of the dunes. “Sea level rise is just one of the pieces,” he said.
As Carter’s team prepares to release a long-awaited study into Delaware’s vulnerability to sea-level rise, he said Prime Hook’s problems, together with the deterioration of some dikes at New Castle, are “some early indications of the type of things that can occur,” he said. “We need to get out in front of problems because it’s extremely difficult to deal with problems after they occur,” Carter said.
DNREC is hoping that its report, expected to be published in May, will improve public understanding of a problem that may not be immediately obvious.
“You are going to see it occur in subtle ways,” said Carter. “It’s not going to look like a tsunami.”
FEDERAL AGENCY ALSO FRUSTRATED
Prime Hook
Prime Hook refuge manager Michael Stroeh explains the delay in completing the Comprehensive Conservation Plan and the issues the Prime Hook area faces.
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Meanwhile, the man accused by some local people of pursuing an unworkable plan at a snail’s pace says he understands why people are upset but he’s trying to deal with a highly complex problem in a way that meets the requirements of federal law.
Michael Stroeh, project leader of the Coastal Delaware Refuge Complex that includes Prime Hook and Bombay Hook refuges, argued that the law requires the Comprehensive Conservation Plan to follow a process of review and public comment that’s likely to last until November or December this year. Before that, no work will be done on the dunes, he said.
Asked to respond to the Delegation’s letter, Stroeh said, “My view is that we are frustrated too. The process has definitely taken too long.”
Stroeh hopes the conservation plan will be released to the public in May, followed by a 60-day period for public comment. It will then be sent to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for review, opened up to a second public-comment period, and finalized by the end of the year.
While plugging the dune breaches is likely to be part of the solution, that alone would only be a short-term fix that would likely be undone unless other major marsh-management works were carried out at the same time, Stroeh said.
Because of decades of drainage and the restriction of tidal flows, the marsh is being starved of the tidal sediment that has naturally built up in it, and so is “sinking” in relation to the sea. As a result, open water such as the Prime Hook impoundments is increasingly replacing the traditional marshland.
Without measures to restore the marsh, just repairing the dunes would cause the marsh to begin eroding them on the inland side, Stroeh said.
“The shoreline and dunes are being cannibalized to feed the marsh,” he wrote in an email. “Just building up the dunes and closing the breaches only temporarily solves the problem. It is the stability of the wetland that would contribute to a more naturally functioning shoreline – not the other way round.”
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At the end of Fowler Beach Road about a mile north of Prime Hook Beach, Cindy Miller points to a breach about 100 yards wide in the dunes where water from the bay is flowing into the impoundment that borders her community.
There’s a barrier marking the end of the road, and beyond that a stretch of broken blacktop showing where the road went before it was inundated. The remnants of pavement quickly disappear from view beneath the waves of the Delaware Bay.
“We are all in over our heads,” Miller said. “It’s a bigger problem than we are.”