Beach sand washes away, breakwaters aggravate

Breakwaters – remember those?
“Renourishment” keeps washing out to sea
John Johnston, Bocanews.com 6 Jan 08;

“How many times are you going to get hit on the head with a bat to know you have a headache?” asks Aaronson of the euphemistically labeled “beach renourishment.”

Futility of a different sort was what iconic rock legend Bob Dylan had in mind when he penned “Blowin’ in the Wind” in 1962. He had in mind that mankind’s greatest inhumanity to man is indifference.

In a more mundane context, he could just as easily have been talking about Palm Beach County government and the seeming indifference to the never changing reality that, indeed, beach sand is going to be “blowin’ in the wind” – and millions of dollars needed annually to replace it.

But it’s not really blowing in the wind, is it? It’s actually storm surge and high wind that’s the culprit, i.e., some $5 million worth of sand and 80 percent of this year’s leatherback turtle nest disappeared in the literal wake of Tropical Storm Andrea in May 2007.

Palm Beach County has replaced about 15 million cubic yards of its shoreline sand over the last decade. Governments at all levels spend about $16 million a year to annually replace the county's shoreline. About $1.1 million comes from property taxes, and about $2 million from the "bed tax" on all hotel stays.

County commissioners in fact just approved another $1.1 million of county taxpayer funds to match state money for the purchase, delivery and placement of over 125,000 tons of sand following an early October Nor’easter and Tropical Storm Noel. The sand will go, of course, to those financially bereft communities of South Palm Beach and Singer Island.

And what’s really scary is that Commissioners Burt Aaronson and Mary McCarty agree on something – that annually spending millions to replace sand is putting good money after bad,

Assessments?

“How many times are you going to get hit on the head with a bat to know you have a headache?” asks Aaronson of the euphemistically labeled “beach renourishment.”

And in fact, much of the beach erosion, and subsequent “renourishments”, serve private condo owners – not a general audience.

Which is why McCarty has in part called for – and a majority of her colleagues at least said ‘let’s look at it’ -- “doing an assessment of those who are directly affected” -- “a per square foot thing,” McCarty said, “and then a bond issue to deal with it.”

And in this case, concrete – not sand – would be purchased.

With support from Daniel Bates, director of Palm Beach County's Environmental Restoration and Enhancement Division, McCarty called for the construction of offshore “breakwaters” to deal with the annual erosion issue.

Seawall Problems

Building seawalls in front of various potentially affected buildings along the shore only adds to serious erosion problems, Bates explained. A seawall directly and propels water around itself, and actually causes greater erosion on either side of it that would have occurred if the seawall wasn’t there.

So, and while a condo building might be preserved by a seawall, an adjacent parking lot or other unprotected buildings might be swept out to sea – which is what happened in Jupiter inlet, Bates said, last May.

“Design work for breakwaters is “already completed,” Bates said, and “if funding was in place,” he added, work could be “finished next year.”

“Next year” is now this year – 2008 -- and not a proverbial peep about changing the “renourishment” system has been heard since.

Just more tax dollars washed out to sea.

Which is going to make it harder for those trying to convince voters to turn down the Jan. 29 property tax reform constitutional amendment.