Henlopen Acres Marina is a foot shallower than last year
Henlopen Acres Marina is filling with silt three times faster than it did in the 1990s. Town commissioners don’t know why, but it’s something they will consider in the coming months as they prepare to dredge the marina for the first time since 2012.
Henlopen Acres Mayor Joni Reich said the town couldn’t rent 10 of 58 slips last year because of silting. According to a local consultant, the depth of the town’s marina dropped one foot from 2018 to 2019.
In an email Jan. 20, Reich said Evelyn Maurmeyer of Coastal & Estuarine Research Inc. estimated the town would need to dredge 6,505 cubic yards of sediment to give the marina four feet of clearance at low tide.
It’s not just town commissioners noticing the need for another round of dredging. During a brief discussion on the marina at a Henlopen Acres commissioner meeting Jan. 10, town clerk Lisa Michaels said people are complaining about the silting. The town has $80,000 in projected revenue from the marina in the current fiscal year.
Reich said Maurmeyer calculated the annual sedimentation rate has nearly tripled since the 1990s. Information from Maurmeyer, provided by Reich, shows about 360 cubic yards of sediment per year entered the marina basin from 1990 to 2003; 444 cubic yards per year from 2003 to 2012; and more than 900 cubic yards per year from 2012 to 2019.
Maurmeyer’s measurements show the marina lost one foot of depth from 2018 to 2019.
In an email Jan. 22, Maurmeyer said increased shoaling and decreasing depths have occurred over the past several years, but she is not sure why.
Henlopen Acres last dredged the marina in 2012, removing 4,000 cubic yards of spoils at a cost of $200,000. Reich said the spoils were placed in geo-tubes on the grassy area by the marina where they drained before the spoils were hauled away by truck to private farmland in the Broadkill Beach area.
Reich said the plan is for the spoils to go to an existing confined disposal site owned by the Army Corps of Engineers in Lewes. She said the town has applied to the corps for a license to use the site.
Reich said the town doesn’t know who will do the work or how much it will cost. Contractors wanted the town to have permits in hand before giving a quote, she said.
Reich said the work requires permits from the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The town has applied for the DNREC permit and is expecting a response by the end of January, she said. In an email, Jan. 24, Reich said the corps had approved the permit application to use the corps’ Lewes site.
Reich said the town continues to pursue dredging because residents enjoy boating on the canal and in the bays. There is currently a waitlist of 17 people who want a slip or a change in location within the marina because their current location is too shallow, she said.
Once this round of dredging is complete, commissioners will examine how to approach the increasing sedimentation rate in the future. With the increasing rate, Reich said it may make more sense for the town to consider smaller dredges more frequently. Discussions with the contractors will help evaluate the best approach, she said.
