OCEAN CITY – Officials with Assateague Island National Seashore are seeking the public’s input on a strategy to relocate oceanfront campsites as they are lost or damaged.
On Monday, staff at Assateague Island National Seashore held an open house on a draft environmental assessment that outlines the park’s plans to move increasingly unstable oceanside campground sites to other locations on the island.
Debbie Darden, superintendent of Assateague Island National Seashore, said as the island naturally moves westward, drive-in campground sites to the east would be lost to sand deposition and encroachment from adjacent dune systems.
“Over time we will gradually lose those oceanside campsites because the secondary dune is going to move,” she said. “In 22 years from now, we expect the secondary dune to have moved almost to the road in some places.”
Park officials noted the shoreline moves between four feet and six feet each year, and in the past 15 years sand elevation has increased from 18 inches to more than three feet, burying several oceanside campground sites and increasing maintenance costs.
Liz Clarke, a consultant for the park, said the proposed plan calls for the park to gradually convert or move the 41 drive-in oceanside sites. Fifteen would be converted to walk-in sites, two would remain as host sites, and the remaining 24 would be moved to the bayside campground.
“That’s accomplished by basically adding a new loop with 20 sites and reconfiguring the existing two loops to make them more dense,” she said.
Without taking any action, Clarke said all drive-in sites and most walk-in sites at the oceanside campground would be lost as they are overtaken by sand.
“People have to realize that this is happening because of nature and it has to happen because the park service just can’t do it anymore,” she said.
Eric Sherry, facilities manager and chief of maintenance at the park, noted the severity of sand deposition within the oceanside campground.
“Because elevation has changed so much at the oceanside campground, the drive-in spaces have become like these troughs and the dunes have grown around them,” he said. “Dune sand is very unstable and when it dries and the wind blows a little bit it fills in those troughs, so we have to continue to clear them off.”
Sherry said park staff have to clear these oceanside campground sites by hand several times each year.
“It’s not even storms that are doing this,” he said. “We’ve already had to clear sand off probably five or six times in the last year, and that’s just for wind events.”
Darden said by establishing a campground relocation plan, park staff can gradually move oceanside campground sites to new locations as needed.
“The island is always changing so as those changes happen, and as we get to the point where we can’t manage those sites anymore, then we’ll gradually move them over,” she said.
The public is encouraged to submit any written comments or suggestions by Aug. 6. For more information, or to review the draft EA, visit http://parkplanning.nps.gov/OceansideCamping.
