Shoveling Sand Against The Tide

Geiger makes his living as an inshore, light-tackle fishing guide around Florida's Indian River County. "We get this dirty-water plume that's almost permanent," he says. "For a couple years now-since the last major beach replenishment in Sebastian Inlet-glass minnows haven't been present. If you don't have them, you don't have anything."

In an official report the council deplores the fact that environmental review of beach replenishment is "dominated" by organisms listed under the Endangered Species Act while "there has been little or no consideration of hundreds of other species affected, many with direct fishery value" such as: red drum and weakfish; hard-bottom-dependent species such as snappers, groupers and black sea bass; coastal migratory pelagics including large mackerels and sharks; penaeid shrimp; corals; and benthic sargassum.

If environmental review is "dominated" by concern for listed species, that review offers little protection. "All this essential fish habitat is also juvenile sea turtle habitat," remarks the Caribbean Conservation Corporation's David Godfrey. "A lot of young turtles grow up on those reefs and sea-grass beds along the east coast of Florida. These turtles are from all over the world, not just Florida. They're from Costa Rica, Mexico, the Mediterranean."

Often, the Corps doesn't even make its contractors fulfill mitigation requirements imposed by its regulatory division. Terms of one environmental impact statement require contractors to transplant some 2,000 corals out from under an 11-mile-long project near Fort Lauderdale. So far, only a few hundred have been transplanted, and most of these are as dead as the Christmas trees that dune stabilizers plant in blowouts. "This project is the end of the thousand-year-old corals," says Florida Sportsman's Terry Gibson. "You might as well chainsaw the redwoods."

It turns out that what's good for corals, turtles, birds, fish and other nearshore marine organisms is also good for surfers. Gibson, who grew up in Florida's Palm Beach County, tells me he used to have 22 high-quality surfing/fishing spots thanks to reefs that held sandbars at the proper angle, but that beach replenishment has reduced these to two. "Ten years ago, the water here was clear; but all except one of these dredging projects have caused chronic turbidity. Sandfleas, coquina clams or ghost crabs are vastly reduced. The projects damn near put two bait shops out of business."

Under federal law, environmental review for beach replenishment is the responsibility of the Army Corps of Engineers, the main facilitator and, therefore, the main promoter. Basically, the Corps asserts that clouding the surf zone and smothering beaches and reefs is salubrious for everyone and everything. The Corps is also charged with calculating the cost-benefit ratios for projects, a task it performs by factoring in such outrageous estimates as "$94 million" in property damage supposedly saved by its replenishment of Ocean City, Maryland, beaches before the winter storms of 1992. "But," notes Pilkey, "Hurricane Hugo, a much larger storm with a ten-foot storm surge, did only $10 million worth of damage in Myrtle Beach, a similar community. . . . The Ocean City estimate of damage prevented seems to have been pulled out of the air."

In New York State the Corps has buried Rockaway beaches with mud and dumped butchers' offal it sucked up from an offshore site on Coney Island. Now it proposes a massive seven-mile beach replenishment project along the south shore of Long Island in the vicinity of Point Lookout. If the project happens, it will wipe out surf breaks as well as important burrowing forage for striped bass such as sand worms and sand eels.

"We had a private coastal engineer from Vero Beach come up and do an independent review for us," says Ericka D'Avanzo, Long Beach environmental chair of the Surfrider Foundation. "He studied Point Lookout Beach, which is eroding, and Long Beach, which is accreting. The Corps has the same plan for both-$207 million for construction and maintenance over 50 years, supposedly offering protection from a 100-year storm. That doesn't make sense. We have more sand now than we had in 1880. The engineer said Long Beach already has 99-year protection. So for one year more the cost is $207 million."

Basically, beach replenishment is a taxpayer-financed gravy train for rich owners of beachfront McMansions, some of whom are now demanding the removal of protective dunes that block their ocean view. In the towns of Gulf Stream, Florida, and East Hampton, New York-whose beaches are continually replenished at taxpayer expense-the median home prices are $1.5 million and $977,000 respectively. "These people aren't interested in sharing public beaches and public resources," comments Dr. Bill Rosenblatt, mayor of Loch Arbor, New Jersey-a state whose entire 127-mile shoreline has been approved for beach replenishment at a cost of $9 billion over the next 40 years. "Access has been limited in many areas. Beach replenishment is a stimulus for development, which then creates its own constituency for additional beach replenishment. The builders and electric companies love it. Now we're one of the top-10 most expensive counties for real estate in the US." Rosenblatt, who also serves on the national board of the Surfrider Foundation, reports that just in his area beach replenishment has destroyed innumerable fishing spots and destroyed or degraded over 50 good surf breaks.

North Carolina has received $161 million in beach pork over the past 50 years, and much more may be on the way. Five years ago Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC) slipped a 14.2-mile beach replenishment project into the Water Resources Development Act. Initial construction costs: $71.7 million; maintenance costs (because the sand quickly washes away): $22.7 million a year for 50 years. Total cost: $1.8 billion. Offshore mining of 79 million cubic yards of sand will take place in critical striped bass wintering habitat opposite some of the most important surf-casting beaches in our nation. "Retreat," as it's officially called-that is, buying out or relocating at-risk buildings-would cost only $300 to $400 million in this area. As global warming melts the polar ice caps, the oceans are rising at rates never seen before. Winning against the sea is as impossible for the Corps as it was for King Canute; but, again, the US Army doesn't like to retreat-especially when it can keep busy making fake beaches. In its environmental impact statement the Corps seriously asserts that spending $300-$400 million to relocate or buy out at-risk buildings isn't practical because such retreat fails to "fully address the problems of long-term beach erosion and storm erosion."