Seagulls Sit on a Jetty made to stop beach erosion, 7th Street, Ocean City, NJ. Photo Courtesy of Nick Kashuba.
By Daniel Mongiello
A couple of weeks ago, I was surfing back in my hometown in New Jersey, and I was having a conversation with my friend when a set rolled in. I leaned back on my longboard, gave my friend a nod, and began paddling.
To my surprise, the wave did not break in its normal spot; it carried for another 3 to 4 yards and broke on a much steeper angle than I was expecting. This caused my board to nosedive and my body to be unceremoniously plunged into the water. As I scampered on my board and paddled back to my friend, who was greeting me with a muffled grin, he said to me, “Enjoying the new seabed?”
I had no idea what he meant, so I said, “What’s different about it?”
He then began to tell me about the process called beach reclamation or beach renourishment. This plan helps prevent beach erosion, and I honestly was blown away by everything he was talking about.
So, I decided when I got home to do more research into the subject. For starters, the beach reclamation projects have been around for a long time, with the first records of them beginning in 1923 on Coney Island. The reason is that the beaches were sinking into the ocean.
One of the solutions they came up with is a process called dredging. Dredging now is solidified as the modern way of beach renourishment. It involves taking a crane out onto a barge, fitting it with a massive claw, and pulling huge chunks of whatever the seafloor is made out of onto the barge, where it is then dumped onto the beach or onto dunes.
Sounds very environmentally friendly, right? If you caught my not-so-subtle sarcasm, you can most likely guess that dredging has huge environmental impacts both where the dredging is taking place and where they are dumping the sand. First, the obvious consequences for micro marine life, algae, and the butterfly effect that is caused by disrupting the habitats where these organisms reside are a problem.
Where they are dumping the sand is a problem. They are mainly pumping the sand back onto the beach, using it in construction projects, or just dropping it deep offshore.
Dropping the sand back onto the beach or offshore are really the only two that cause problems. The mass amounts of sand disrupt habitats, trapping nutrients and possibly adding unwanted pollution to the area.
Furthermore, a lot of the data and arguments to promote these reclamation projects come from large hotel or apartment companies looking to get more space on the beach to hypothetically attract more customers. This was subsequently what was occurring at my beach in New Jersey.
This arcade called Wonderland had been bought by a large hotel company, which said that the beaches were suffering from a lot of erosion, even though multiple jetties were in place that were said to already slow the beach erosion.
This entire process is then taken a step further when, after some digging, you find out that most of the companies in charge of dredging are using taxpayer money to pay for most of it, if not the entirety of the alarmingly expensive process. The initial dredging cost, which is a lot lower, is picked up by the hotels and apartments, while the maintenance and after-dredging in public waterways, such as public beaches, is paid for by taxpayer dollars.
After the dredging is done, due to the sand eventually crumbling and filling in where the initial dredge was done, this costs way more due to the fact that they have to keep coming back every couple of years. This scam, as I am now going to call it, is perpetuated all over the U.S. and other parts of the world, as dredging companies can go to hotels and apartments on the water, scare the owners and lobbying factions of the area into believing that their hotels and apartments are going to sink into the ocean.
The dredging companies then say the only way to solve this issue is to pay them millions, with most big renourishment programs being $20 to $100 per cubic yard for sand and silt, and around $100-$300 per cubic yard for tougher material such as mud and rock. The hotels agree because they don’t have to pay for it, they get more bodies on the beach, which means more revenue for them, and the dredging companies pick up millions along the way.
So, how do we go about fixing this problem? The easy answer is to talk about it, bring this issue up to your local government and local officials who actually care about keeping our beach environments safe and healthy.
Beach erosion can be a problem, but dredging is not the solution. Our beaches are here to stay, and it’s up to us to keep them that way.