Shoreline Erosion | Coastal Armoring + Engineering
May 25, 2023

If Your House Were Falling Off a Cliff, Would You Leave? – the New York Times
Excerpt:
Homeowners along the eastern coast of England are watching the North Sea swallow their communities. Help is on the way — but only for some.
On a stormy day in the spring of 2021, the sea defenses on the beach below Lucy Ansbro’s cliff-top home in Thorpeness, England, washed away. Then, the end of her garden collapsed into the North Sea.
As she watched the plants tumble over the edge, she feared that her house in this coastal village 110 miles northeast of London would be next.
“We lost three and a half meters of land,” said Ms. Ansbro, a 54-year-old television producer, sitting in her kitchen on a recent morning. “Every time I went out, I didn’t know if the house would still be here when I came back.”
Coastal erosion is a natural process as waves pound beaches around the globe, but along this stretch of England’s eastern coastline, stronger storms and bigger waves are striking fear in local residents like never before.
Thousands of homes here are threatened by the sea, and the government agencies tasked with defending them are straining to keep pace. The Committee on Climate Change, an independent body that advises Britain’s Environment Agency, has reported that 8,900 residential properties — 1,200 of which stand on stretches of coastline with no protective structures — are at risk from coastal erosion. Without active shoreline management, around 82,000 homes could be lost by 2105.
To stem the tide, the Environment Agency has pledged 5.2 billion British pounds (around $6.5 billion) to build and realign 2,000 defense structures — including sea walls made from rocks or cement and steel — that could protect communities from erosion and flooding, though not forever.
But in some high-risk coastal communities, homes are being left to the mercy of nature. Distraught homeowners in these areas are facing the prospect of eviction and, worse, of demolishing their own homes.
Ms. Ansbro’s house, which she bought in 2010 for about £590,000, now stands 35 feet from the cliff edge. After she lost her garden, she applied for permission from the local East Suffolk Council and Environment Agency authorities to replace the gabions (metal cages filled with rocks) and the sand-filled geobags that had been lost with riprap. The requests were granted, but that didn’t necessarily mean help was on the way.
In England, the costs of building sea defenses are shared by national and local offices. On the national level, a funding calculator assesses how much of that £5.2 billion budget is potentially available. It depends on whether the “benefits are greater than the costs,” based on a timeline of erosion and four location-specific policy tiers: Advance the Line, where new defenses extend the land area out to sea; Hold the Line, where new defenses maintain the existing shoreline; Managed Realignment, in which the shoreline is allowed to erode but money is spent “to direct it in certain areas”; and No Active Intervention, where no national funds are invested.
On a local level, councils and landowners are left to make up the difference.
“In layperson’s terms, the policies are referred to as defend, retreat or abandon,” said Angela Terry, CEO of One Home, a group advocating on behalf of homeowners at risk…
SHARE THIS ARTICLE
More on Shoreline Erosion | Coastal Armoring + Engineering . . .

Barcelona’s beaches could vanish as authorities abandon ‘enhancement’ – the Guardian
For the 1992 Olympic Games, Barcelona rediscovered the sea. It beefed up its beachfront using thousands of tons of sand, and the area is now packed with tourists and lined with beach bars. Barcelona’s beach may be partly artificial, but it’s big business. The way things are going, however, soon there won’t be any beach at all. Across Catalonia, rising sea levels and winter storms are eating away at the coastline…

The ‘Ike Dike’ is the Army Corps of Engineers’ largest project ever. It may not be big enough – Grist Magazine
In September 2008, Hurricane Ike made landfall near Galveston, Texas, as a Category 4 storm with around 20 feet of storm surge…In the aftermath of the storm, Texas officials searched for a way to protect Houston from similar events in the future, and they soon settled on an ambitious project that came to be known as the “Ike Dike” …

One-third of India’s coastline is vulnerable to erosion, impacting coastal communities – The New In
The Centre has observed that 33.6 per cent of the Indian coastline was vulnerable to erosion, 26.9 per cent was under accretion (growing), and 39.6 per cent was in a stable state.
One-third of India’s coastline is vulnerable to erosion, impacting coastal communities residing in erosion-prone areas, including fishermen communities…

Hemsby: How many other communities are at risk of erosion? – BBC News
Coastal erosion claimed three homes in Hemsby last weekend and a further two properties in the village are deemed at serious risk. Are there other Hemsbys along the coast and what can be done to protect the communities which live there?
The East Anglian coastline is no stranger to coastal erosion…

The way of water: Can anything be done to save our disappearing beaches? – WA Today
South Beach is a far cry from those wide-open ultra-Aussie surf destinations such as Scarborough and Trigg (the bit in front of Wilson Park is barely a kilometre long)…So you can imagine my shock when I recently popped down for a jog and a swim to discover that a good chunk of the white stuff that was so fundamental to my experience of Fremantle had disappeared…

Beach Houses Around the Country Are at Risk of Sinking, and Coastal Enclaves Are at War About How to Save Them – Robb Report
For some homebuyers, the fantasy of coastal living will forever outweigh the risks. But rising sea levels and shifting sands can mean getting closer to the ocean than you might have intended.
It was after a beachside housewarming party in Southern California that the neighborhood snitch was unmasked…

In pictures: France demolishes beach apartments and relocates residents due to rising sea levels – Euronews | Reuters
When it was built at the end of the 1960s on one of France’s most glorious Atlantic coastlines, the beach was over 200 metres away.
Today, the hulk of the 80-flat Le Signal apartment block perches precariously on a dune just metres from the water and local authorities are tearing it down before it tumbles…

Beach erosion: Satellites reveal how climate cycles impact coastlines – UNSW Sydney
New research shows coastlines across the Pacific Ocean may respond differently to El Niño and La Niña cycles.
Researchers from UNSW Sydney have analyzed millions of satellite photos to observe changes in beaches across the Pacific Ocean. The findings, published in Nature Geoscience today (Feb. 10), reveal for the first time how coastlines respond to different phases of the El-Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) cycle…

Frustrated landowners push back against state’s ‘managed retreat’ approach to rising seas – Hawaii News Now
Citing advances in erosion control technologies, a coalition of oceanfront property owners are urging the state to give them more weapons in their battle against beach erosion…
But state officials and climate change experts said barriers such as sea walls will destroy the state’s beaches…