Beach Nourishment: A Critical Look – Gary Griggs | Journal of Coastal Research

An aerial view of the Virginia Beach Hurricane Protection and Renourishment project. which replenished 1.25 million cubic yards of sand, increasing the beach from 150 and 280 feet wide to as much as 300 feet (Courtesy of the Norfolk District, U. S. Army Corps of Engineers CC BY 2.0 via Flickr).

More than $15 billion, mostly federal dollars, have been spent moving sand to the shoreline for both recreational and shoreline protection benefits. Still, whether in New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Florida, or California, the life span of the sand added artificially to these beaches in many cases has been relatively short and in some instances has been less than a year…

California will help return tribal lands as part of the historic Klamath River restoration – the Los Angeles Times

The Klamath River runs more than 250 miles from Oregon’s high desert interior to the Pacific Ocean in northern California and is the site of the world's largest dam removal project. The dam decommissioning effort, which is intended to improve water quality and fish habitat, includes restoration of 2,000 acres formerly overtaken by the hydroelectric dams, which were built between 1918 and 1962 (Courtesy of Oregon State University, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Flickr).

More than a century has passed since members of the Shasta Indian Nation saw the last piece of their ancestral home — a landscape along the Klamath River where villages once stood — flooded by a massive hydroelectric project.

Now more than 2,800 acres of land that encompassed the settlement, known as Kikacéki, will be returned to the tribe. The reclamation is part of the largest river restoration effort in U.S. history, the removal of four dams and reservoirs that had cut off the tribe from the spiritual center of their world…

Looting of the sea: the great sand theft – ABC

Sand mining, Mizoram, India (by Karen Conniff CC BY-NC 2.0 courtesy of Water Alternatives Photos via Flickr).

It is the most demanded raw material after water. It is used to make concrete, chips, detergents, paints… and even artificial islands. The big cities are hungry for sand and to satisfy it, the world’s beaches are being plundered….