The Corps and Dredging

If you ask the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers how they like to deal deal with shoreline erosion,
what they say is something like:
"We look at all the available alternatives and recommend what works best and is most cost-effective."

But what they mean is:
"Dredging."

If you ask which alternative, in their opinion, works best and is most cost-effective, what they'll say is:
"renourishment."

But what they mean is:
"Dredging."

credit: Florida Sportsman

And what are "all the available alternatives" examined in the various reports and studies done or commissioned by the Corps? Rock revetments, seawalls, no action, and renourishment. Corps Senior Project Manager Rick McMillen told the Daytona Beach News-Journal in May, 2006, "Beach renourishment is the cheapest viable and most effective option." In fact, when asked at a public meeting whether he had ever recommended any other form of erosion control in his 30 years with the Corps, he said, "no." < Dredger at work.

What Mr. McMillen didn't mention was that in the Corps' own Flagler Beach Shore Protection Evaluation, done by Taylor Engineering in 2002, you'll find the following disclaimers: "...beach nourishment, a reasonably expensive enterprise to begin with, provides a short-term solution. Once nourished, beaches require frequent renourishment [estimate for Flagler Beach: every five years]. Also, given the unique coquina sediment that composes Flagler Beach and the numerous hard rock outcrops, an adequate sediment source may prove difficult and costly to find. Finally, beach nourishment does not provide an avenue for dune reconstruction."

You can read the entire 2002 State Road A1A Shore Protection Evaluation, Flagler Beach, Florida report. And you can read the 2004 Flagler County, Florida, Shore Protection Reconnaissance Report. These two documents were pre-requisites to the ongoing $1.7 million Feasibility Study

What if Undercurrent Stabilizers were added to the list of alternatives? How would the Shore Protection Evaluation have described them? Perhaps: "...Undercurrent Stabilzer systems, a method far less expensive than any of the other alternatives (except "no action"), is the only one that provides a long-term solution. Also, it would using the forces of nature to induce the unique coquina sediment now offshore to regenerate the beach. Finally, Undercurrent Stabilizers provide the only available method for natural dune restoration."

When it comes to shoreline erosion, dredging is the default position for the Army Corps of Engineers. On the face of it, this sounds reasonable: Dredge up sand from offshore and put it back on the eroded beach. But look more deeply into the process, and you see that it's a bandaid at best (it denies the root causes of erosion and actually causes more!) and a dirty scalpel at worst (dredging damages life on and offshore--people's lives as well as wildlife. < A "renourished" beach in North Carolina: sticky sand and mudballs.

What is the root cause of erosion?

Here's what the American Shore and Beach Preservation Association has to say, in the Introduction of the 2000 edition of its journal, Shore and Beach: "...about 85 percent of the sandy shorelines of the United States are eroding from a combination of damming of rivers, inlet improvements, sea level rise, and large storms."

Here's what the Florida Department of Environmental Protection has to say (from its website, http://www.dep.state.fl.us/beaches/programs/bcherosn.htm): "...a significant amount of coastal erosion in Florida is directly attributable to the construction and maintenance of navigation inlets."

Here's what Robert Dean, P.E., Professor of Coastal and Oceanographic Engineering at the University of Florida in Gainesville, and a recognized authority in beach renourishment practices, had to say in an e-mail to Save Flagler's Beach: "...there are many places where inlets which have been modified for navigation are the primary cause of beach erosion. The east coast of Florida is an example. On the east coast of Florida , the inlets account for 80% to 85% of our beach erosion."

And here's what Barry Drucker, Minerals Management Service scientist responsible for studying the offshore sand mining process used for nourishment, wrote in correspondence with Jerry Berne of Sustainable Shorelines, Inc., a non-profit monitoring agency: "Some of [the movement of offshore dredging/sand mining operations toward deep waters] is definitely due to the realization that exploiting too much of deposit in close proximity to the beach can actually have a devastating effect on the shoreline and subsequent increases in erosion."

Jerry Berne of Sustainableshorelines.org further explains: "What Mr. Drucker does not say, and what is becoming painfully evident in areas such as Florida and our Gulf coast, is that much of our easily exploitable nearshore shoals have already been mined, so that the move to mine deep water deposits is now required.

This means more expense, a spreading destruction of the seabed habitat, and further harm to onshore and nearshore ecosystems.

It also means that our nearshores are deepening and steepening, allowing more destructive storm energy to reach the shoreline.

By allowing our coastlines to be controlled by the dredging industry, its coastal engineering consultants and lobbyists and often uninformed officials, we are losing these and the coastal habitats these sustain."

Mr. Berne wrote a powerful editorial about the Army Corps of Engineers and its destructive practices for the San Diego County's North County Times. To read this column, please click here.