McBride Bathhouse demo should be put on hold

I have been a volunteer at the Cape Henlopen State Park Hawk Watch for many years. I would like to call attention to plans put forward by Delaware’s Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control to demolish the McBride Bathhouse in the park and replace it with a two-story facility on a new footprint on the dune between the current bathhouse and the Hawk Watch. This is the approximate location of the restaurant DNREC proposed back in 2022, a proposal that DNREC paused and that now cannot be built under the provisions of Senate Bill 6, Sen. Russ Huxtable’s legislation, signed into law in 2023 by Gov. John Carney.

The Cape Henlopen Hawk Watch is most active from Sept. 1 through Nov. 30. During this time, the watch is staffed by a paid biologist and a dedicated group of volunteers who tally the hawks migrating south over Cape Henlopen. Their efforts are part of a nationwide effort to monitor the populations of raptors – hawks, eagles, ospreys and falcons. Unlike Cape May, with its peninsula acting as a funnel that concentrates migrating raptors into a narrow corridor, raptors coming across Delaware Bay to Cape Henlopen come from many points of the compass. Standing on the Hawk Watch on any fall day, an observer can find raptors to the north, overhead and to the south. The southern exposure can account for at least 40% of raptors seen on any particular day, and an even higher percentage when stiff north winds push the raptors south as they cross the bay. Looking south from the Hawk Watch, the largest landmark is the Great Dune. Many raptors pass low over this spot and continue on across Fort Miles. It is critical to the success of the Hawk Watch to be able to count these birds. A two-story bathhouse would interfere with this view by obscuring the Great Dune and thus skewing raptor counts, wreaking irrevocable damage on the continued viability of the Hawk Watch.

What concerns me even further is that the recently passed bond bill’s appropriated money is for the renovation of the McBride Bathhouse, not its demolition! DNREC’s plans play fast and loose with the bond bill’s language, which seems clear to me. I believe a better (and legal) plan is to renovate the McBride Bathhouse (consistent with the bond bill) to make it handicap-accessible, possibly by eliminating the snack bar, replacing it with an area in the parking lot for a few food trucks, and using the extra space for improved bath facilities and a lifeguard station. Let’s keep the Hawk Watch viable!