Factbox: Sifting Through U.S. Beach Sand Numbers
Here is a summary of what Florida and other coastal states and communities have been doing to protect and rebuild their shorelines based on to the American Shore and Beach Preservation Association (ASBPA) data.
Gone with the wind: storms deepen Florida’s beach sand crunch
Costs of so-called beach renourishments are a fraction of the total, measured in hundreds of millions of dollars, but the effort is crucial for Florida’s $67 billion tourism industry. And while sand needs are surging, there is not enough to go around.
Shore towns use sand dredged from inlets to widen beaches
Coastal areas around the country are dredging clogged inlets to make them easier to navigate, and using the sand they suck from the bottom to widen beaches damaged by natural erosion or serious storms. Concerns that have arisen from inlet dredging include possibly disturbing wildlife habitat, or affecting the shape of nearby shorelines.
Life’s a beach: Cannes ships in sand for film festival
Every year the French Riviera town of Cannes rolls out the red carpet to A-list celebrities at the world’s most glamorous film festival. Now it wants to roll out a bigger beach too. The Mediterranean resort is shipping in 80,000 cubic meters of white sand – enough to fill 32 Olympic swimming pools – to widen the beach along a 1.4 kilometer (0.9 mile) stretch of seafront.
Did sand from Australia’s east coast get sent to Hawaii?
Is it true that back in the day, they used to mine sand at the beach?
Bahamas sand to fill in Florida beaches? Congress gave OK for study but no funding
The 2016 Water Resources Development Act authorized the Army Corps of Engineers to study using foreign sand, such as from the Bahamas, to widen shorelines without resorting to expensive and inefficient truck hauls from inland mines. A year later the study remains unfunded in the agency’s budget.
The sands of time
Human intervention to control beach depth is often futile. Repeated studies have found that sand pumped onto beaches in order to protect coastal property may be washed out by a storm or two. These beaches commonly lose all the new sand in five years or so.
Sand washes away as quickly as it can be dumped, Bathtub Beach, FL
Between 2004 and 2014, some $13.6 million was spent on beach renourishment in Martin County, Florida. About $7.1 million came from local funds — your tax dollars. In the past two years, more than $6 million from a variety of sources has been spent to renourish and restore dunes at Bathtub Beach alone.
Coastal Commission Rejects Bid to Cancel Broad Beach Sand Replacement Permit
One of the line-items on the November 2017 California Coastal Commission agenda was a one-year extension of the beleaguered Broad Beach Replenishment Project. Following years of delays with issues ranging from sand sourcing to legal battles of all shapes and sizes, the project has been slow to get off the ground, and proponents of alternatives such as artificial reefs are hoping to succeed.