Beach Nourishment:
Is It Worth The Cost? - Response
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by Orrin H. Pilkey and Andy Coburn
He Said, We Said…
Mr. Marlowe says we rely more on semantics than reason…
…We say that we're both guilty of playing this game.
He says that buildings don't cause erosion…
…We agree. But, as we stated, buildings DO cause an erosion
PROBLEM. If there were no buildings along the shoreline, we would
not have an erosion problem, we would not have the beach nourishment
process and we wouldn't be having this discussion.
He says that we say that no one would care if beaches without
buildings eroded…
…That's correct. There are thousands of miles of eroding
shoreline around the globe without adjacent development, all with
very healthy beaches. The point is that his argument that beach
nourishment is needed to repair the beaches is wrong. Let the buildings
fall in, move them back or don't let them be built to begin
with and the beach will be healthy forever.
He says that relocation/retreat is more expensive than
beach nourishment…
…We say the reverse is true and have demonstrated this with
actual numbers.
He says we don't appreciate the economic, environmental
and recreational importance of beaches…
…We say this is utterly untrue! We do appreciate these aspects
of beaches which is why we take the stand that we do on beach nourishment.
Our appreciation of these issues leads us to understand, and be
offended by, how the nation's beaches have become engineering
projects – not much different from highways or sewage plants – complete
with bulldozers, sand pumps and sea walls all to protect the investments
of a minute number of beachfront property owners. It is Mr. Marlowe
and the American Shore and Beach Preservation Association who fail
to see and appreciate what a rare treasure beaches are.
He says that the federal government, and not local residents,
are the primary beneficiaries of beach nourishment….
…We disagree. Mr. Marlowe's numbers include tax revenue
from the entire coastal zone rather than the immediate beachfront,
a common trick of the pro-nourishment lobby. The federal and local
governments will benefit, just as they do now, if buildings are
moved back or demolished as the shoreline retreats. The American
free enterprise system assures that the hot dog stand that falls
in on the first row will quickly reappear on the second row.
If we
do nothing and let the beaches naturally erode, the overall, long-term
(two to four generations) benefit to society will be greater than
trying
to maintain the shoreline in place. Status quo is a meaningless
term on the ocean shoreline.
He says that we say that nourished beaches have a negative
environmental impact…
…Of course they do. Does anybody truly believe that you can
pump millions of cubic yards of sand on a beach, bulldoze it around
and do it again every few years…and not have a severe environmental
impact? The 2001 Oak Island, NC beach nourishment project funded
under Section 1135 of the Water Resources Development Act (a new
funding category) and constructed explicitly to restore sea turtle
nesting habitat illustrates how Mr. Marlowe's argument that
beach nourishment does not damage the coastal ecosystem is absurd.
This beach, which contains abundant rock cobbles that make it very
difficult for any but the toughest turtles to nest, may well rank
as the worst beach ever emplaced on an east coast shoreline. If
habitat restoration was the true goal of this project, pumping would
have been immediately stopped once the rocks appeared. This is a
clear demonstration of the fact that "habitat restoration"
was simply a convenient category to extract money from the federal
government in order to save some buildings.
He says that a "stunning environmental benefit"
of the Brunswick County, NC beach restoration project is the recovery
of seabeach amaranth, an endangered species…
…Seabeach amaranth is a "pioneer species" that grows
on newly created dunes, overwash fans and other areas of bare sand.
According to the National Park Service, allowing natural sand movement
on barrier islands is the most important factor in preserving seabeach
amaranth. Since the beaches and dunes of Brunswick County are slated
to remain artificially stabilized through additional renourishment
projects, we say that any "recovery" of seabeach amaranth,
no matter how stunning, is only temporary and that this endangered
species likely will not be around for long.
He says that in evaluating beach nourishment impacts,
we are forgetting the value of "new nesting areas for sea
turtles, spawning grounds for horseshoe crabs and habitat for
piping plover"…
…We say that it is hard for us to view this as a benefit.
If the buildings that were the cause of the erosion PROBLEM had
not been there, or if they had been removed or moved back, all of
these "beneficial environmental effects" would have
been there naturally.
He says that the federal government is the most important
cause of shoreline erosion (and therefore it is reasonable for the
feds to pay for nourishment)…
…We say that no matter who causes the shoreline to retreat,
if there were no buildings, there would be no erosion PROBLEM
and
no need for beach nourishment. It is true that channel dredging
and jetties are responsible for some of the erosion, but shoreline
retreat rates on undeveloped shorelines globally, and on National
Seashores in the US, are of the same order of magnitude as those
of developed shorelines. The fact is that global warming related
to the greenhouse effect is causing sea level rise which has to
be a major cause of shoreline retreat along all the world's
shorelines.
In conclusion, we say that global warming is upon us. There is
little disagreement about this within the scientific community.
The responsible approach to any aspect of coastal management must
take global warming and sea level rise into account. Scientists
believe that sea level rise will continue and accelerate, and that
shoreline erosion rates will accelerate as well. Beach nourishment,
therefore, will have to be applied more frequently and at an ever
increasing cost to taxpayers. This must be recognized in the societal
debate about the viability of beach nourishment. It is not enough
to consider nourishment in a short-term context as solving an immediate
problem. Mr. Marlowe and the ASBPA are doing this nation a great
disservice in their myopic view of beach nourishment as a means
to preserve the investments of an affluent minority.
American beaches should not be engineering projects. We need to
step back, take a deep breath, and take a look at where we are
going.
We need to remember what beaches were like when we were children.
How has it come to be that we blandly accept turning our beaches
into playgrounds for engineers, and at the same time accept the
notion that buildings constructed next to an eroding shoreline
must
be protected by taxpayers? Does our society not assign any responsibility
to those who are so insensitive and stupid as to place buildings
in a hazard zone with a known rate of shoreline retreat? It is
because of federal support for beach nourishment that people put
buildings
where one can almost name the date in which the building will "fall
in!"
Step number one in encouraging responsible shorefront development
is to remove vulnerable coastal development from the most hazardous
areas through relocation or demolition. Step two is to ensure that
beachfront property protection efforts do not adversely affect
the
quality of, the long-term sustainability of, or public access to
our nation's beaches. Step three is to place the financial
burden of protecting beachfront property squarely upon beachfront
property owners. Step four is to require recognition of accelerating
sea level rise as a future problem in beachfront property protection,
especially in the case of beach nourishment. Most important of
all,
however, is to acknowledge that this generation does not have the
right to destroy the next generation's beaches.
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