Sand helps revive shore 4 Mel

Sand helps revive shore 4

Melissa Harris | Washington Bureau
Posted July 6, 2001

WASHINGTON -- As millions of tourists crowd Florida's beaches for the summer, many don't realize that the shorelines they're visiting might be man-made.
Increasingly, Florida's beaches are benefiting from federally funded renourishment projects aimed at expanding the size of the beaches to attract more tourists. And, of course, more revenue.

This year, the House has set aside a record $43 million for beach renourishment in 10 Florida counties, including $8.5 million for Brevard. The Bush administration proposed $200,000 for Brevard.
The $43 million would nearly double what the White House wants to spend on beaches, with Congress ignoring President Bush's call to put a brake on funding for such projects. The spending bill is expected to pass the Senate.
Each project is planned for 50 years because the sand transplanted to eroded beaches eventually disappears during long-lasting winter storms called northeasters, or is starved by human development and sand-trapping inlets.
The sand must be replaced repeatedly, at high costs.
And Congress regularly obliges, to the ire of environmental groups, the White House and taxpayer advocates.
The result is increased spending on beach renourishment that benefits tourist-driven economies and improves the tax base.
Under the leadership of U.S. Rep. C.W. "Bill" Young, R-Indian Rocks Beach, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, coastal towns such as Cocoa Beach and Melbourne have won out over budgetary concerns.
Nowhere is this more evident than in Florida.
U.S. Rep. Dave Weldon, R-Palm Bay, shepherded funding through the House for his district, which stretches along the Atlantic from Cape Canaveral to Fort Pierce.
"This will enable us to continue this important project this year," Weldon said of the area's ongoing beach renourishment effort.
The White House is concerned that every dollar that goes toward beaches means less money for other priorities.
The administration also is concerned that the appropriations bill passed last week includes a funding formula in which the federal government pays two-thirds of the bill. Nationwide, the bill to taxpayers from now until 2050 is expected to be $6 billion.
Local benefits are obvious
The economic benefits to local communities are clear. Larger beaches mean more room for parking, restrooms, volleyball nets and tents, which attract more visitors.
As the number of visitors increases, hotels, condominiums and businesses begin dotting the shorelines. Before long, a once sleepy coastal town possibly could be picked to host MTV's spring break show.
Beach projects are under way in New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, North Carolina, California and other states. Scientists and politicians justify the projects as necessary for protection from storms and further erosion.
About 40 percent of Florida's beaches have been designated by the state Department of Environmental Protection as "critically eroded."
People cause most erosion
Eighty-five percent of the erosion is caused by people, said Robert Dean, a coastal-engineering professor at the University of Florida.
"Beach renourishment works in the state of Florida, and there is a lot of data that indicates that our projects aren't unraveling like crazy," he said.
Dean said a 10-mile stretch of Miami Beach, which was renourished from 1976 to 1981, is losing less than 1 percent of its sand every year and has 20 million visitors annually.
Other experts, including Orrin Pilkey, professor emeritus of earth and ocean sciences at Duke University, said renourishment projects actually are hurting America's beaches.
"We have a natural system overridden by people," said Pilkey, adding that development should be pushed back from the shorelines. "When you dig up sand off of the continental shelf, it kills everything there and it kills everything where you dump it."
Taxpayer groups are outraged that inland taxpayers' money is going to pay for Florida's beaches.
Brevard work defended
Weldon and Virginia Barker, director of beaches for Brevard County, said responsibility to pay for the renourishment lies with the federal government because it caused the problem in Brevard. . Sand travels from north to south along the Atlantic coast of Florida. But because inlets such as the one at Cape Canaveral have been dredged by the federal government for military purposes, the sand's natural travel route has been blocked.
The sand is trapped and builds up on the northern side of the inlet, leading to sprawling, beautiful beaches. The southern side of the inlet, meanwhile, is starved.
"This is not a natural process of erosion," said Brendan Curry, Weldon's spokesman. "Brevard's problem was created by the federal government in the 1960s when the Canaveral inlet was built."

Melissa Harris can be reached at mharris@tribune.com or 202-824-8229.