Surfers say beach rebuilding has ruined best waves
REHOBOTH BEACH – A gloomy report from Delaware’s chapter of the Surfrider Foundation says many of surfers’ best-loved local breaks are now “generally unsurfable” because of the effects of beach replenishment on their waves.
If a golfer “woke up tomorrow and 90 percent of the golf courses in Sussex County were gone, you’d be a little upset,” said Ed O’Connor, the chapter’s chairman. “That’s what we’re facing right now. There used to be consistent breaks all along Rehoboth Beach and Dewey Beach, and they’re all gone.”
To convince policymakers and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers — which conducts beach replenishment projects in Atlantic coastal states — to take their worries seriously, the Surfrider Foundation is preparing to release data from a survey last year of surfers’ spending in Delaware, O’Connor said.
The surfing group’s worries stem from the impact on wave action from beach replenishment, in which engineers pump sand up from the sea bed onto the coastline to expand how much sand a beach contains.
The report says replenishment projects in recent decades have disturbed how waves break on the south and north sides of Indian River Inlet, and have covered up old stone jetties and groins, which produced a lot of good waves. Since “most historical surfing in Delaware, and most of the surfable areas in Delaware, appears to be closely related to hard structures,” the report says, projects which don’t prioritize preserving those structures hurt surfing.
These days, Cape Henlopen’s Herring Point and the north side of the Indian River Inlet are usually the best places in the state to surf, the report says. But with so many other former surfing spots now diminished, there are “crowding concerns, conflicts and injuries to surfers” at those two spots, the report warns.
O’Connor said a survey of surfers funded by a grant obtained by the nationwide Surfrider Foundation group collected data in Delaware through the end of last year.
“It was an economic impact survey of how much you’re spending when you go surfing here,” he said, and he hopes when it’s published, it will prod shoreline planners to think more about surfers.
“We would like to have planning that would incorporate surfing into the considerations,” O’Connor said. “Right now we’re not even on the map.”
In other states, beach nourishment projects have taken surfers’ requests into account. Projects the Corps has done in New Jersey included sandy bump-outs in the coastline that produced waves.
The Surfrider report, though, says that has yet to happen in Delaware, with the exception of a stone groin replacement project at Herring Point.
“Currently, property protection and tourism are the main considerations,” the report says. “Most projects have been designed and implemented with little or no consideration of surfing.”
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