Coastal towns: 'This flooding is worse than Sandy'

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[h=4]Coastal towns: 'This flooding is worse than Sandy'[/h]Communities note flattening of dunes as high tides brought icy water into streets.

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Erosion from the latest Nor'easter was bad with the beach eroded right up to the foundation of some houses , but the flooding for many was worse. STAFF VIDEO BY PETER ACKERMAN


Aerial view of the flood damage at Bethany Beach, Del., on Sunday, Jan. 24, 2016.(Photo: Suchat Pederson, The (Wilmington, Del.) News Journal)


Beach communities in New Jersey and Delaware spent Sunday evaluating the aftermath from the massive winter storm as high tides washed out dunes and brought icy water into the streets.
Delaware's sand-enriched beaches from Lewes to Fenwick Island took a whipping as dunes were flattened and wiped away.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>The ones that remained looked like a giant front-end loader came through and scooped off the face, leaving a jagged series of cliffs.
Sand fencing lay crumpled like the tracks from a derelict roller coaster. And in Rehoboth, the boardwalk buckled in places from the force of waves pounding the boards from the bottom up. A frosting of sand an inch thick covered the popular attraction at the end of Rehoboth Avenue.
The shoreline destruction was coastwide and included extensive bayshore flooding.
It makes "us very, very vulnerable," said Anthony Pratt, Delaware's shoreline and waterway administrator.
The tally is bad: Gone is the entire dune at the north end of Rehoboth's Boardwalk. The dune also was flattened at the south ends of Bethany Beach and nearby South Bethany. Along the remaining ocean coast, Pratt said, about 20 miles' worth of dunes have been badly damaged. Delaware's ocean coast spans 24 miles total.
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How bad the damage is further north along Delaware Bay north of Lewes is still a question. Extreme flooding of roadways to many of the Delaware Bay beaches kept state assessment crews out even after the weather cleared on Sunday morning.
"We haven't been able to get through to the bay beaches," said David Small, secretary of the state Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control.
Small, who flew the coast Sunday afternoon with Delaware Gov. Jack Markell, and worked for many years as a reporter and editor covering coastal storms, said "the flight over was amazing" because the marshes on the back side of Delaware Bay communities were so full of water.
Without the marshes, he said, "I can't imagine where all that water would be."
Delaware and the federal government have invested more than $100 million over the last 15 years to pump sand onto the state's ocean beaches and build man-made dunes. The most recent beach repairs along the ocean coast were paid with Superstorm Sandy relief dollars. The federal government footed the entire bill for restoring beaches and rebuilding dunes along the public ocean beaches after the Oct. 29, 2012, storm.
All along the Delaware coast there was significant dune damage and areas where the ocean washed through to Delaware<span style="color: Red;">*</span>1, pushing a field of crumpled, tangled sand fencing and other debris.
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Delaware<span style="color: Red;">*</span>1 from Dewey Beach south was closed much of the day Sunday while state transportation department crews worked to remove debris and sand. Water levels from Rehoboth Bay receded throughout the day. In Bethany Beach, Lewes and along the Delaware Inland Bays, many streets were still flooded and impassable.
The same was true of communities along Delaware Bay. The worst of the three high tides was Saturday morning, when, based on preliminary data, it came close to reaching a record 9.2 feet set in March 1962. Preliminary data recorded a high tide of 9.15 feet at Lewes Breakwater Harbor at 1 p.m. Saturday.
Preston Lee, who lives on Delmar Avenue on the beach side of Lewes, evacuated Saturday. There was 30 inches of water in the lower garage area of his home, he said.
He returned Sunday morning and said, "there's still about 6 inches in our lower level."
During Superstorm Sandy in 2012, the water rose to 22 inches in the garage area, he said.
"This flooding is worse than Sandy," he said.
In New Jersey, the brunt of the storm’s damage came in the form of significant beach erosion. New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Bob Martin is expected to be on the beaches Monday to survey the damage.
Residents in Monmouth and Ocean counties in New Jersey appear to have walked away with relatively minor damage.
Shore towns also watched with trepidation as three tide cycles hit during the storm. Streets filled with water and icy chunks that some authorities likened to “mini-icebergs.”
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In Sea Bright, N.J., where flooding from the Shrewsbury River often is a concern, officials are still assessing what, if any, property damage was caused by the storm, Mayor Dina Long said.
“Nothing has been self-reported. Even people with low lying homes, I haven’t hit anyone with water in their homes,” said Long, the borough’s emergency management coordinator.
The same appears to be true in Ocean County, N.J., where water seeped into crawl spaces of recently raised houses, but not into the living areas, Ocean County Sheriff Michael Mastronardy said.
"It wasn’t the Sandy-type flood but it was certainly enough for people to be concerned," he said.
Accumulation totals hit 26.5 inches in Howell, while Jackson saw as much as 21 inches of snow, according to official spotters for the National Weather Service. Snow totals ranged anywhere from a foot to 20 inches across the rest of Monmouth and Ocean counties.
New Jersey fared well during the blizzard, largely because the state’s residents heeded the warnings of emergency management officials and stayed home, Gov. Chris Christie said. No deaths were reported, and New Jersey State Police responded to 301 crashes statewide.
“Without having to use the heavy hand of government to put mandatory travel bans in place, trust in the good judgment of the good people of New Jersey, a voluntary travel ban, they stayed off the roads,” the governor said in a news conference Sunday morning before returning to New Hampshire, where he is campaigning for president.
At the peak Sunday, about 22,000 customers were without power, most of which were in Atlantic and Cape May counties. By evening, that number was down to 7,334, including 1,137 in Monmouth and Ocean counties.
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The big questions in Delaware weren't just the loss of dunes and sand and how to pay to repair the damage. The other big if was how developed cities like Rehoboth and Bethany beaches would have fared without the robust beaches and dunes.
"This boardwalk would have been gone," Pratt said as he stood at Bethany Beach. "I think it's been a good investment even though it has been expensive."
Pratt need only think back to another significant winter storm in January 1992. It was a fast-moving nor'easter that ripped away sections of boardwalks both in Rehoboth and Bethany Beach.
Neither community had a robust dune. Worse yet was the damage in South Bethany, where dozens of oceanfront homes lost decks and steps and the street behind them was a mass of rubble. Water and sewer lines snapped from the power of the waves.
There was so much shoreline erosion from that storm that state officials launched an in-house, large-scale renourishment program to bolster the beach and dunes. Later, the state partnered with the Army Corps of Engineers to do more widescale repairs and restoration. The state pays 35% of the cost. The federal government pays the balance on those projects with a 50-year commitment for federal aid.
Pratt wasn't the only one Sunday who saw the value in the investment of sand.
"I would think the whole north end of the boardwalk would be destroyed without the beach renourishment," said Rehoboth Beach Mayor Sam Cooper.
It was the dune that protected much of the boardwalk from significant damage, he said.
Pratt said because the entire shoreline is so vulnerable, state crews will push sand up the beach to begin forming a new dune as soon as sand moves back to the shore. Typically during major storms, sand from the beach forms a bar just offshore. That bar helps to dampen the waves before they hit the beach and do more damage. In calmer weather, some of the sand is transported back onto the beach by waves.
Markell said he and his staff are assessing all of the damage from this storm to determine if a request for federal disaster assistance is in order.

After three consecutive high tides, the dune at the north end of Rehoboth Beach was gone Sunday, Jan. 24, 2016. Waves rushed under the structure and bucked it. Thick sand coated the surface.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>(Photo: Chuck Snyder, The (Wilmington, Del.) News Journal)

Angela Wilson lives at Long Neck now but she grew up in Rehoboth and has witnessed many storms.
"I've seen lots of hurricanes and nor'easters, and I've never seen the beach this beat up," she said.
To the south, in Bethany, the damage was no less dramatic.
U.S. Sen. Tom Carper, who with Markell and U.S. Rep. John Carney, visited the town Sunday afternoon said the loss of so much sand is "very dispiriting" but, he said it is all about the property protection that sand provided during this storm.
"It's not just beach renourishment," Carney said. "It's property protection."
Cathy and Bud Davis, who live in Bethany West, surveyed the damage Sunday, too.
Cathy Davis said she admits she was one of the people who complained about the height of the dune in Bethany Beach when it was being constructed.
Not this weekend.
"I was shocked when I came down Saturday, she said. "Thank God we've got 'em," she said of the dunes.
Follow Molly Murray on Twitter @MollyMurraytnj. Contributing: Susanne Cervenka, Asbury Park (N.J.) Press.
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