A U.S. Army Corps of Engineers project to expand Broadkill Beach is on schedule -- despite having to work around spawning horseshoe crabs this summer.
The Army Corps's contractor has laid down about a quarter of the 1.9 million cubic yards of sand they plan to add to the Sussex County beach. The fill is being dredged from the Delaware River navigational channel.
An Army Corps video posted last week shows workers moving truckloads of horseshoe crabs away from the construction, with the help of local volunteers.
"We're going to put them down on a piece of beach that they won't renourish until much later," says one volunteer in the video. "It's a shallower slope, and the crabs can climb on up, spawn and the eggs'll hatch in 30 days, so they won't get buried."
Weeks Marine, the contractor, will be working between Virginia Avenue and North Carolina Avenue in Broadkill over the next two weeks. The federally-funded project is set for completion next April.
