SHIFTING SANDS - LEAVE BEACH RESTORATION TO OCEAN
Forwarded message from
[ Subject: Shifting sands - Leave beach restoration to ocean
[ From:
[ Date: Mon, 4 Oct 2004
Shifting sands - Leave beach restoration to ocean
October 04, 2004
http://www.news-journalonline.com/NewsJournalOnline/Opinion/Editorials/03OpOPN37100404.htm
Reeling from the worst natural disaster in U.S. history, hurricane-
shocked Galveston residents in September 1900 decided they would
build a wall to keep sea water forever more out of their barrier
island city. Similarly dazed by this season's repeated storm surges,
business owners and residents of Volusia County are talking about a
wall of their own, or spending upward of $40 million to restore a
severely eroded dune line cut away by Hurricanes Charley, Frances and
Jeanne. That discussion would be better informed by the hard-learned
lessons in Galveston.
At the turn of the last century, the Texas city of 40,000 people
enjoyed one of the finest beaches on the Gulf Coast, making the
thriving commercial entrance for the Southwest also a recreational
magnet for the region. But the hurricane swept over the island,
claiming more than 6,000 lives and smashing waterfront homes.
Survivors determined to rebuild on the beachfront had little trouble
persuading other residents to issue bonds for a 3-mile concrete
barrier, 17 feet high, 16 feet thick at the base, five feet at the
top, to whatever came at them from the Gulf of Mexico. What came,
again and again, were the normal seasonal storms and high tides that
confronted the sea wall, scoured the beach and, denied the give and
take on a natural dune line, retreated with its sand. Galveston may
have saved the beachfront homes of its affluent residents with the
wall, but it lost its beach, its recreational appeal and an important
sector of its economy.
Volusia should not repeat that mistake. Sea walls force the ocean
into places it would not go, eroding dunes, preventing it from
replenishing the coastline in a natural cycle good for the
environment onshore and off. Similarly, nourishing beaches with
dredged sand is a futile and expensive attempt to do inadequately
what the ocean, unfettered by man, achieves to perfection
indiscriminately. And, yet, the federal government is preparing to
build 5-foot-high berms to help protect buildings hanging out over
cut-away dunes. And the county and state are contemplating spending
millions more to restore the beach and dunes -- beach, dunes and
buildings that will be imperiled again and again by the ocean's rise.
These are decisions that deplete public coffers to favor affluent
property owners who shouldn't have been allowed to build there in the
first place unless they assumed all risk of loss from wind or wave.
We are not insensitive to the hardship and devastation some of those
property owners have endured. But this is a matter of fairness and
fiscal responsibility. Inland residents lost much of their tree
canopy to the recent storms. The government isn't opening coffers to
replace their loss, nor should it. Why, then, should inland residents
have to underwrite the loss of sand for a beach homeowner or
hotelier? The exception, locally, would be for public funding to
replenish areas of the beach where jetties and other public
impediments exacerbate erosion.
Instead of spreading sand to temporarily expand area beaches and
benefit private property owners, Volusia County's money would be
better used buying as much beachfront land for parks and parking as
possible.
Owners of homes and businesses devastated and likely depreciated by
the hurricanes might be happy to talk with a willing buyer about now.
Those who opt to repair or rebuild private beachfront structures
should do so with the knowledge that the costs they incur from now on
-- for sand, insurance or uninsured loss -- are their own, alone.
End of forwarded message from
Jai Maharaj
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peace, but a sword.
"For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the
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"And a man's foes shall be they of his own household.
- Matthew 10:34-36.
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