Newsletter #2

Welcome Sustainable Shorelines' Newsletter #2 chronicling this past week's events on and about our coastlines.

As many of you know others who are interested in our coastal affairs, I urge you to forward this e-mail.  To those friends without e-mail, please print this and give/mail to them.  The more people who know and the more they know about what is happening on our coastlines, the more likely we can influence this for the better.

Please note the last article on Saco, ME.  A statement of the Corps' project manager on measuring the success of the alternatives is of interest:  "All parties, including the Corps of Engineers, are uncomfortable with lack of adequate performance evaluation methods for the structural alternatives being considered," Habel said. "Beachfill without structures won't last."  Incredibly, the Corps will not consider a structural method, Holmberg Technologies, that does not (added as correction, 3-5-03) require the beachfill.

Thank you for your support.

Jerry Berne Sustainable Coastlines, Inc.

Sustainable Shorelines is a nonprofit corporation dedicated to documenting current environmental events on our shorelines, identifying and seeking to change those coastal policies and practices which are harmful and advocating protecting our coastal habitats and the ecosystems these support with methods proven to be environmentally sound and sustainable.

THE NEWS

NORTH AND SOUTH CAROLINA
Hugh Morton visited with several hundred Country Day School students in Charlotte encouraging them to get involved with environmental issues and advocacy.  He showed slides illustrating the effects of air pollution on mountain flora and on innovative way to combat erosion on the coast (Holmberg Technologies).

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will conduct a series of meetings along the coast in March to receive public comments about the NC Coastal Management Program.  If you can attend, go.  All begin at 6 PM.  Here is the meeting schedule:  March 10, NC Division of Coastal Management, Wilmington; March 11, Carteret County Courthouse, Beaufort; March 12, Manteo Town Hall.  Contact Brian Long with the Division of Coastal Management, 919-733-2293, ext. 229, or by e-mail at brian.long@ncmail.net

Atlantic Beach, NC defeated a proposal to participate with other Bogue Banks communities in a Corps program placing sand dredged from harbor and channel on effected beaches.  Atlantic Beach, as it is currently receiving almost all of this sand not dumped offshore, objects to receiving considerably less if this is approved.

At Emerald Isle, NC, a third Weeks Marine dredge is being brought in to try to meet a March 31 deadline for placing 1.8 million CY of sand on the shore.  Only 650,000 CY have been placed since December.  Failing to finish costs Weeks in lost per CY payments and potential damages.

FLORIDA AND GEORGIA
At the Port of Miami, underwater blasting for dredging a deeper turning basin (to 44 feet and for $40 million) concerns environmentalists as the National Marine Fisheries Services approves an "Incidental Harassment Authorization" for it to "take" small numbers of marine animals, mainly dolphins or turtles.  When questioned about the large number of manatees usually in the area, the NMFS spokesman said that his agency doesn't cover manatees.  The last dredging destroyed vast areas of sea grass prairie, prime manatee habitat.  The Miami River is also to be dredged to clean it of potentially toxic muck.  The dredging is predicted to cost $13.5 million while the disposal of the polluted muck may cost $50 million.

At Port St. Joe in the Panhandle, the dredging companies are facing new competition.  Portside land is becoming more valuable for residential development than port activities.  Even while the Florida Department of Community Affairs objected on environmental reasons, the Port wants to widen and deepen its channel which will no longer be needed if the site becomes homes.

In Sarasota County, every property owner may have to pay an extra $10 in taxes per year or other tax levy to fund its part a nourishment project on mostly private Siesta Key.  A one-third mile county beach is also part of the $7.3 million, 3 mile project.  Now all it needs to do is find the sand source.  The commissioners all agree wide beaches protect barrier islands which protect the mainland.  Unfortunately, they also erroneously agree that nourishment is the only option.  Also in the county, Stump Pass is to be dredged to a straight channel from Bay to Gulf costing $11.6 million over 8 years to maintain.  What this is going to area coastlines is outlined by Dick Holmberg in a recent letter to the Sarasota Herald Tribune, reciting what happened the last time.

Indian River County, however, is finding the first sand it is pumping from Indian River Shoals is of good quality, only courser than existing.  Of course this existing sand is from previous nourishments mixed with some sand mined inland.  This first sand is the "top stuff", what comes later still concerns local environmentalists.  Sand is being pumped 18 miles along the coast for this 2.5 mile, $10 million project.  A section of nearshore reef is to be buried in the process.

MID-ATLANTIC
New Jersey is still concerned about the storm damage and loss of protective beach with several more weeks of wintry weather possible.  The Corps has figured the renourishment cost per beach block of $1-1.2 million.  Unfortunately for coastal residents, the NJ DEP only has $5 million in emergency funding for this.  Howard Marlowe, coastal dredging lobbyist with several client communities in this area, says this year's damage makes erosion the big worry for them.

GULF
Federal agencies promised cooperation, moral support and new studies, but no money for Louisiana's proposed $14 billion program to stop coastal erosion.  Governor Foster says re-diversion of rivers so that they again carry silt to the delta, planting marsh vegetation, restoring hydrologic systems and rebuilding shorelines and barrier islands, would restore some of the delta's natural buildup that man interrupted by building flood-control levees and other structures along the Mississippi River and in wetlands.  The Corps says this is "workable".  Congressman Billy Tauzin asked the EPA to devise a new, faster and more flexible dredge-and-fill licensing process for wetlands.  In Bayou Farewell, Mike Tidwell's book on the loss of the "Cajun coast", dredging canals in the bayou for oil and gas pipelines triggered disastrous erosion and hastened the process of depletion the sediment from the Mississippi once counteracted.

In Orange Beach, AL, the need for money to build up a reserve fund and beach renourishment, has the City Council discussing tax increases, including an additional 1 percent in the sales tax.

WEST
The California Coastal Commission may be legal again as Governor Gray Davis signed new legislation to correct its member's appointment terms. In Oceanside, $1.5 million is spent annually on dredging the harbor and placing the sand on the beach.  A jetty and breakwater reach into the sea and form the entrance to Oceanside Harbor.  These may explain the need to artificially nourish the beach.

NORTHEAST
Maine's DEP amended the rules to allow property owners in the frontal dune areas unlimited rebuilds on sand dunes provided that they do not harm the dune, rebuild with flood-proof designs and elevate the building.  Even in "velocity zone" areas, the structure could be rebuilt once.  This can occur provided the damage does not exceed 50% of the "appraised" --not assessed-- value of the property.

In Saco, ME, the Corps is abandoning plans to rebuild the jetty at Cape Ellis to stop erosion.  It has actually caused most of the erosion in the area.  The Corps is now considering T-groins ($5 million) and underwater breakwaters off the jetty ($4-7 million).  It is enlisting the aid of the Woods Hole Group to study local waves and create models ($250,000).  The Corps' Vicksburg lab will complete the modeling.  Yes, this is the same lab which recently rejected Holmberg's methods.  To our friends in Saco, "Good grief and good luck!"