Beach Preservation Has Moved!

The Surfrider Foundation has consolidated all of our issue-based blogs into one Coastal Blog. Come check it out at www.surfrider.org/coastal-blog

Another Crappy Beach

That's two in as many weeks. This one is in Topsail Beach, NC. Shells are the culprit. What gets me is the cost the town will incur for the cleanup; $22,000. Thanks to Surfrider Foundation's Florida staff person for spotting this one!

The sand should have been tested right? What happened?

Full story here.

Balls of Clay in Texas

No that title is not about a certain type of bravado unique to Texas residents. It is what they got in a beachfill on South Padre Island. We've seen many instances of dredge and fill projects leaving poor quality material on beaches; but never like this, never clay balls.
How would you like it if your local beach turned into this?

Read the full story at a South Padre local's blog

And many, many more pictures here.

I'm sure the ACOE did the same lengthy feasibility study that is required for such projects. The end result being a foot-tall stack of paper. It gives the impression that every possibility has been studied and every variable has been tested. Yet we still get end results like this. You'd think they tested the borrow area material right?

Beach Mansion Bailouts in NC

Good call tying the construction of groins on the beach to a "bailout" of homeowners. If you're not aware, there is a bill in the NC legislature to loosen the state's decades-old restriction on shoreline structures. The partnership of the John Locke Foundation, a libertarian think-tank, with the NC Coastal Federation is a very interesting combination for sure. But certainly effective in this case.

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2011/02/27/2094702/legislature-should-reject-beach.html

Legislature should reject beach mansion bailouts in N.C.

From John Hood, president of the John Locke Foundation in Raleigh, and Todd Miller, executive director of the N.C. Coastal Federation, a non-profit dedicated to protecting the N.C. coast:
Our country's economic system is based on the belief that the free market is a lot smarter than any government program.

If you have a good idea and you think it will make money, you are welcome and encouraged to make a go of it.

But if your idea fails, you're not supposed to ask the government to bail you out.

That can be hard medicine to take, but it is the only way to prevent people from making more bad decisions and asking the government to bail them out too.

That's why taxpayers ought to be skeptical about a bill, Senate Bill 10, that is likely to come up in the N.C. Senate this week.

For years, our state has banned expensive structures on our beaches called groins. They are like jetties - big, usually built out of rock and on the beach for decades.

The folks who want to repeal the ban say groins are needed to protect private homes from erosion. Scientists and environmentalists say groins don't work and will hurt habitat and other parts of the environment, and could cause increased erosion on down-drift private property.

But everyone agrees groins are expensive. A state study put the price tag of building a groin at as much as $10.8 million. Regular maintenance and monitoring can cost as much as $2.25 million per year.

And for what? To protect a small number of investors - people who bought homes built on sand.

It's hard not to feel sympathy for folks who are trying to beat back the sea to save their beachfront homes. But it should not be the taxpayers' responsibility to bail them out.

But that is what a groin is - a multimillion-dollar bailout. Repealing the ban on groins will shift responsibility for a private sector economic decision - buying a home in a high-value but potentially risky area like the beachfront - to the public sector.

Think about it: What will happen if beachfront homeowners and builders know that the government can build a groin to protect their home in the event the sands start shifting the wrong way? You got it - they will keep building homes where they don't belong. And they will keep coming back to taxpayers to bail them out.

That is exactly what has happened in New Jersey, where the coastline is crowded with groins and other hard structures. Not surprisingly New Jersey also has one of the biggest shore-line "protection" budgets in the country - more than $25 million annually.

Taxpayers already pay millions to protect beachfront property. According to the N.C. Division of Water Resources, taxpayers have paid $85.9 million in local, state and federal funds to move sand on to N.C. beaches over the past 10 years - mostly to protect private property owners. We don't need to add to that bill by building groins, which also require regular beach "renourishment."

As the legislature debates the cost of groins, we hope the new Republican majorities in the legislature will see groins for what they are: a beach mansion bailout funded - now or in the future - with our tax dollars.


Choice comment from the site: "After 25 years of one of the most successful beach protection (and taxpayer protection) coastal management plans in any ocenfront state, no Democratic majority has successfully passed a bill to gut this plan, benefit the few at the expense of the many, and have the taxpayers pay for it...until this fleabitten dog of a bill. Even with the previous dominance of prominant and oft-maligned "down east" legislators such as Mark Basnight, our state's Democrats - those alleged "wasters of taxpayer money" - saw how wrong allowing groins and other "hardened" structures was from both an environmental and an economic standpoint. Sadly, it has taken a Republican majority to advance this bill to destroy our coastline and fleece the taxpayers. In fact, this represents a cornerstone of the "New Republican Agenda", which is a shame, really, considering that these "New Republicans" ran on the platform of not wasting tax dollars.

The bill does not explitly prohibit tax dollars from being used to build or maintain these groins, it does not establish enforceable standards for what would constitute "negative impacts", it does allow not one, not two, but three groins per inlet, and it does stand in opposition to the findings of just about every scientific expert on hydrology, geology, and shoreline management over the past 25 years.

Of course, these Republicans don't consider handing out tax dollars to their cronies and specia-interest buddies to be "wasting" those tax dollars; no, these Republicans see those tax dollars as important "gifts" to those who financed their campaigns.

That's not waste...that's theft.

Dealing with Storm Damage & Preparing for Sea Level Rise

Some people think nothing can be done about our original sin of building too close to the coast. They have an "oh-well" attitude and accept beachfill as a fact of life whether they like it or not.

Other people are visionaries. They see the future and they see value in protecting public resources for the lowest cost in the long run.

This is a great video about thinking ahead, working together, and preserving public resources at the lowest cost to taxpayers. Two things jump out at me about this video. They started in 1995! It took sixteen years to get to construction but it is doable. The other is that the engineered development (bike path) at the beach failed after three years.



More at http://surferspoint.org/ and venturariver.org Paul Jenkin, featured in the video, also waged a ten year battle to remove the Matilija Dam thereby freeing the sand that would naturally feed the beaches. So he not only gave the beaches "Room to Move", he is going to provide them with sand as well.

Lessons from an Unlikely Place - the Passaic River

We are often asked about the alternatives to beachfill as if there really aren't any. In fact there are quite a few, and we've unexpectedly found many of them all in one place. The report of The Passaic River Flood Advisory Committee

Amazingly, piling mounds of material on the banks of the river is NOT one of their recommendations. Yet many of their findings would work equally well on the coast as alternatives to the dredge, dump, and fill regimes. Others of course are unique to this river system. The complete list is below with the points that apply to the coast in bold type.

The Advisory Commission's comprehensive plan recommends:
1) Expanding and expediting floodway buyouts, with State Blue Acres funds and FEMA funds.
2) Encouraging home elevation projects in flood prone areas if acquisition is not an option.
3) Buying undeveloped land for use as flood storage areas.
4) Improving operation of the Pompton Lakes dam floodgates.
5) Initiating de-snagging and shoal dredging efforts to facilitate improved river flows.
6) Removing feeder dams to offer flood relief to Pompton Lakes, Wayne and Pequannock.
7) State adoption of National Flood Insurance Program regulations to ensure state rules are consistent with local flood control ordinances, and eliminating the risk that FEMA could suspend its flood insurance program in New Jersey.
8) Expediting the DEP's permit process to let towns more quickly obtain permits to de-snag and remove river debris, repair retaining walls and remove shoals.
9) Improving effectiveness and efficiency of county and local emergency response plans.
10) Enhancing the Passaic River flood warning system.
11) Contracting with the National Weather Service to create inundation maps to provide critical information to enable quicker flood projections and greater storm preparedness.
12) Enhancing public involvement, information and outreach on flood issues.
13) Requesting a re-evaluation by the Army Corps of Engineers of the larger potential major engineering projects for long-term flood damage reduction.
14) Updating floodplain mapping to eliminate decades-old maps that do not include detailed modeling of floodplains.
15) Having towns in the Passaic River Basin pursue flood risk reduction changes to their master plans, zoning ordinances and flood prevention ordinances, to guide future development away from floodplains or prevent future development in these high risk flood-prone areas.

If these solutions are good enough for the State of NJ in the Passaic River Basin, why are they not even discussed for our beaches and coastlines? Quite the opposite is true in NJ. Development has gone wild following beach replenishment making the entire coast even more vulnerable.

Broad Beach - Boulders as Far as the Eye Can See

Last year, the homeowners at Broad Beach in Malibu, CA installed 1.1 mile rock revetment seawall on the public beach. I stopped by this past weekend to see how it's doing, and the results are not pretty. I happened to be there during an extremely low tide, so I could actually get down on a narrow stretch of sand. But it was very clear from the lack of any "dry" sand that during most of the tidal cycle there is literally no beach walk on.

Visit the "Save Broad Beach" page on Facebook to learn more and show your support for freeing this beach.

Bluff Collapse and Erosion is "Normal"

A recent bluff collapse in Encinitas reminds gives us an opportunity to look at how we manage an eroding shoreline and what we can expect more of in the future.


It's great to hear City engineer Greg Shields say: "It's been happening as long as the bluffs have been there. It's an ongoing erosion problem that is a natural occurrence, and what you witnessed today was a normal event."

He's absolutely right, and is a good reminder that these things happen, they happen all the time, and will continue to happen. It's probably a good idea to not build a house right up next to the bluff. Give the ocean some room, because "erosion happens."

Public Money For Private Beaches? NJ Residents Opposed

A new poll finds that an overwhelming number of New Jersey residents think beaches that are replenished with public money should be publicly accessible.

A whopping 82% of people surveyed say the few inaccessible beach towns should become more accessible in exchange for beachfill money.

Story here http://www.northjersey.com/news/state/010311_Poll_Improved_beaches_should_be_open_to_public.html

But that is not the plan of NJ Governor Chris Christie. His DEP is about to change beach access rules to allow these inaccessible towns to get beachfill money. More from the August 2010 blog entry.

An Editorial Board agrees with the people of NJ here http://www.app.com/article/20110104/OPINION01/101050329/Don-t-relent-on-acces

Property rights don't outweigh public's right to enjoy beaches -Editorial

The Wilmington Star-News came out with a great editorial piece this weekend supporting the long-standing ban on hardened shoreline structures.

"...structures don’t solve the problem; more often than not they shift erosion to another part of the beach."

"But during the decades-long coastal building boom, developers and landowners fought to be able to build in places coastal experts warned were erosion-prone. If it was vacant, someone pushed to build there, or to build closer to the water."

"Ideally, the ban should remain intact, for our beaches’ sake.

But if it is to be breached, as now seems is possible, the public must loudly remind the Honorables that the beaches belong to all state residents, not just a fortunate few with a spectacular view."

Lawyers Screw their Clients out of Sand

State calls off big Galveston beach project

Last week the TX Supreme Court took some of the teeth out of the Open Beaches Act, ruling that properties that suffer erosion from storms can't be ceded to the public, as was previously the case. The TX General Land Office (GLO), who manages public shorelines, decided that this ruling means the state can't go forward with a large Beach Fill project because it would now benefit private property. Of course the project would have benefited the very people who brought the original case.

"It's kind of ironic that the Pacific Legal Foundation, who supposedly is on the side of property owners, has just screwed the property owners who were going to have a direct benefit from the renourished beaches," Patterson said. He said that without the project, the rapidly eroding beach will put some of those houses in the Gulf of Mexico much faster.

So much for unintended consequences.

San Diego Gets More Than Sand

Beachfill projects can go wrong anywhere and we should be able to learn from them regardless of their location. I don’t want this blog to only be about projects gone bad in NJ. So, from my friends on the West Coast…



Mission Bay in San Diego was to be dredged for navigation and the material was to be used as fill on a local beach. But the project met with an unexpected, unknown element. Namely, the stuff on the bottom of the Bay! Everything from old tires to event older beer cans were being sucked off the bottom of the bay and onto the beach.



See the full slide show here in case you forgot what the Bud Light logo looked like ten years ago, what the Coors logo looked like 20 years ago, and what the Pepsi logo looked like 30 years ago.

It gets worse, when confronted with the “objects” appearing in the sand, the Army Corps and the contractor guaranteed local elected officials that a person would monitor the slurry coming out of the pipe. According to this article, that didn’t work out so well.

But anyone who has seen these pipes gushing the sand and water slurry would know there is no grabbing beer cans or whatever out of them while in progress.


A small collection of items found in with the beachfill.

More media on this issue.
http://www.10news.com/news/25471772/detail.html
http://obrag.org/?p=26170
http://www.voiceofsandiego.org/survival/article_566931f2-dcb3-11df-b31b-001cc4c002e0.html
http://aquafornia.com/archives/34668

The Weather Channel on Beachfill

This is a big complex issue and two minute attempts to convey it to the public often fall short. However, I think the Weather Channel did a really good job here for such a short segment.

Neighbor Against Neighbor on Long Beach Island

Long Beach Township, NJ, on Long Beach Island, has posted the names of property owners that have not signed their easements to relinquish their property allowing the replenishment project to go forward. Unfortunately, the Township did not learn from the Borough of Harvey Cedars, also on Long Beach Island, where neighbor was pitted against neighbor and things got ugly. A "Mob Rules" mentality took over the pro-replenishment crowd and it got to the point that non-easement signers were afraid to go out to the store.

See the website http://longbeachtownship.com/

The list of homeowners is not buried somewhere on the site. It is right on the homepage, under the smiling picture of the Mayor.

This news story mentions residents sitting down and "talking" to these holdouts in the near future. I am not hopeful that will go smoothly. More here http://www.app.com/article/20100818/COMMUNITY/8180313/Taxpayers-groups-to-invite-easement-holdouts-to-meeting

The truth is there are hundreds of people in Long Beach Township who have not signed their easements, but the town is focusing on these few because they plan to replenish a small section of town first. In fact the NJ DEP changed their beach access rule in 2007 specifically for Long Beach Township which has four non-contiguous sections of town on one island. Instead of requiring signed easements for the whole town before a beachfill was possible, the state decided a string of signed easements in a given section was enough for replenishment in that section.

Without attending the meeting I can tell you what they are going to talk about. Here are people's main problems with the easements.
1) They are permanent.
2) They are assignable
3) They make you give up the rights to part of your property but you still pay taxes on it and you still have liability on it.

What's sad is that despite everything you've heard, there is no written requirement by the Army Corps to obtain permanent easements. Temporary ones have been used before in other Army Corps projects. Saddest of all is that the whole project could have been configured so that easement were not necessary or they were easily obtained.

NJ Gov's Plan - Make Taxpayers Pay Twice

NJ Governor Christie wants the taxpayers of NJ to pay twice. NJ taxpayers (and every taxpayer in the country for that matter) have already paid to build a beach and protective dunes in Atlantic City. These dunes protect the pubic infrastructure of the boardwalk, and the private property landward of it. But Christie's DEP wants to lower the dunes so people can see the ocean. That's when you'll pay twice. When the ocean over-tops these dunes in a storm, your tax dollars are going to clean up the mess. The Press of Atlantic City covered the effort to lower the dunes today, complete with secret meeting between DEP officials and local legislators.

http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/news/breaking/article_fa325fcc-abd8-11df-bf2b-001cc4c002e0.html

This author lives in a town where dunes block the ocean view from much of the boardwalk. Our dunes were built by the town, at the town's expense. They were not built by the Army Corps when tens of millions of dollars were spent filling our beaches. Go figure. We've lost much of our view, and yes crazy people want to lower the dunes and get the view back. Those people did not live here in 1992 when the December Nor'Easter destroyed the boardwalk. Not damaged: destroyed. There were no dunes.

I'd love to be able to see the ocean as a drove down Ocean Ave here. I can't. I'd love to be able to see the waves as I drove down Highway 12 in the Outer Banks. I can't. But don't lower those dunes for my view. I know they provide something far more valuable than a view.

Beachfill Meets Beach Access...Again

The NJ DEP is planning to overhaul the current beach access rules in a way that makes beach replenishment a much greater possibility in many places. Proposed rule here. Let’s be frank, much of the Jersey Shore is easily accessible. But there are a handful of towns that purposefully limit access and another small group of towns where access is limited by geography or the way the town was laid out. In either case, access could be improved especially if the towns got something they really wanted out of it. That something is beach replenishment money.

At least that is how it worked the last time the beach access rules were overhauled – just a few years ago. The rules declared that access meant more than just a path to the beach; it meant parking, it meant some amenities like bathrooms. The current rules set specific standards for these things and allowed flexibility and exceptions to all of them. Best of all they tied these standards to state beach replenishment funding. So towns that really did not want outsiders on their beach and that really did not want to add parking places could keep the status quo. They just weren’t going to get public beachfill money. And towns that desperately wanted the beachfill money but had to take down a few “No Parking” signs and ask the local Wawa to provide a public restroom in order to get it had good motivation to do so. It seemed fair enough.

Of course there was a lawsuit (more on that later) and an election.

The rules proposed by Chris Christie’s DEP do not couple beach replenishment funds and beach access. The proposed rule on beach entryways for example would revert to the US Army Corps of Engineers standard which is one every half mile. The current standard is one every quarter mile (with exceptions where not practicable.)

The current rule has towns adopt ordinances declaring public beach access points as conservation easements. The proposed rule asks the town to submit a Public Access Plan, which is voluntary. There is no penalty to the town if they do not. There is no penalty to the town if the plan they submit has no real public access, and worst of all, by eliminating all the standards for access, DEP will have no power to compel them to alter their Public Access Plan.

Towns that don't meet the current standard of an access point every 1/4 mile, but do meet the Army Corps' standard of an access point every 1/2 mile are essentially getting the green light for beach replenishment soon.

However, this is not a done deal folks. The public comment period is coming. Stay tuned for how to speak your mind.

Missing - 3 Year Old...Beachfill

Missing: Three to four year-old beachfill.

Missing From: Surf City, NJ.
Missing Since: Winter 2010.
Features: Light, sand-colored
Distinguishing Marks: Unexploded ordnance
Last Seen: Possibly traveling south during one of the many Nor'Easters this winter.
Traveling With: Typically associates with Members of Congress and large amounts of taxpayer money.

If you see this sand, please call the Army Corps at 215-656-6515.

This picture above is not of a badly eroded beach that desperately needs beach replenishment. It is a picture of a beach that was replenished just a short time ago in the winter of 2006-2007 at a cost of roughly $5 Million. They dredged up unexploded ordnance (bombs and fuses) with it, and the cleanup cost about $25 million.
More from the Press of Atlantic City.

LA Times: Southern California beach erosion is worst in a decade

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-vanishing-beaches2-2010apr02,0,2223726.story



...In January and February, powerful swells, high tides and strong winds swept away tons of sand from the coastline, stealing as much as 30 to 40 feet of beachfront at some locations.

In the month or two since the El Niño-driven storms, coastal communities -- Laguna Beach, Malibu and Manhattan Beach among them -- have worked to patch the damage by making repairs and trucking in fresh sand, but some worry whether nature will return the sand as it has in the past.

The sand loss is a familiar phenomenon.

Shifting sand is part of a natural cycle that happens each year. Each spring, potent storm surges pull sand from the beaches out to sea. Over the summer, gentler waves gradually push it back ashore.

Periodically, beach cities throughout Southern California try to make up for the so-called sand deficit by pumping the material in from offshore.

Global warming and sea rise are contributing to the deterioration of beaches in the long term, scientists say, but those forces are not to blame for this spring's dramatic changes.

It's the exceptional level of damage this year that has been cause for alarm.

Beach Fill: Fleecing of America

An interesting piece on NBC about beach fill (nourishment). Be sure to let the second video load, as it contains some extra raw video from the interviews. I particularly like (or dislike) Harry Simmons' (president of ASBPA)quote: "Retreat is unamerican" apparently he thinks we're at war with the ocean.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

DIY Dunes in Long Beach Township, NJ

Long Beach Township, NJ passed an ordinance recently requiring oceanfront homeowners to repair damaged dunes like these if they are on private oceanfront property. But there is a catch. If you signed the construction easement for the beach replenishment project, the town will fix the dune damage themselves, as they always have.

The unanswered question is will these Do-It-Yourself homeowners have to get permits from the state DEP to legally enter and manipulate the dunes? Oceanfront homeowners typically wait 5 months for a CAFRA permit when doing any work on their homes. The new ordinance says the work needs to be done in 15 days. Hmmm.

Imagine 25 homeowners all hiring different contractors wielding bulldozers in a mad rush to fix their dunes in two weeks. Sounds like a disaster waiting to happen.

More here http://pressofatlanticcity.com/news/press/ocean/article_4cdf75a4-07a4-11df-a7d9-001cc4c002e0.html?mode=story