Newsletter #7 (3/31-4/6)

Welcome to Sustainable Shorelines' Newsletter #7 (3/31-4/6) chronicling this past week's events on and about our coastlines.  Please excuse the tardiness of this edition and this week's edition.

As in every letter, I urge you to forward this e-mail to others concerned for our coasts.  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.

Also, due to the volume of time required to produce this newsletter and to pursue the other advocacy work of Sustainable Shorelines, the next newsletter will announce a contribution/membership program to insure the success of our efforts by providing the financial resources needed to fund a full-time position.  Please consider how much you could help change the face of our shorelines by participating in this effort.

Jerry Berne Sustainable Shorelines, 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.

NORTH AND SOUTH CAROLINA
The NC Coastal Resources Commission is lighten the permitting load of its staff and eased the process for sound side property owners who want to build piers or docks on the backside of barrier islands.  Now a new "general permit" that streamlines the approval process for projects the CRC has deemed to be "routine construction."

On Eagle Island, NC, near Wilmington, the county Vector Control Leader Ken Sholar is preparing to fight hoards of mosquitoes soon to be rising from a vast expanse of dried, cracked mud of originally dredged from the bottom of the Cape Fear River dredge spoils covering much of the island.  Each crack in the mud represents a nursery for encephalitis and the West Nile virus.  On the northern half of the  island, a 158 acre parcel was purchased by the town of Leland and the local conservation district as a potential educational and "green" tourism area, especially for passive activities like kayaking and bird watching.

Problems continue in the aftermath of moving Mason Inlet, NC.  A $850000 mitigation project tied to last year's relocation has been red-flagged by the state for spraying rock onto the beach of Figure Eight Island and spilling material into tidal marshes.  The project is intended to recreate wetland habitat lost to the relocation.  Figure Eight purchased the 85,000 cubic yards of material to help renourish roughly 2,400 feet of beachfront in its losing the battle with erosion.  Any non-sand material, including shell hash, sprayed onto a beach can have severe environmental impacts.  The issue also brings into question the standards the state requires for the material dumped onto its beaches.  This is underscored by the incompatible material of recent nourishments in NC.  Also, a new $25000 inlet management plan is being implemented with its cost paid by residents of Figure Eight and north Wrightsville Beach.

Longtime residents of Nags Head worry that the scores of huge new rental homes built in the past few years threaten the charm of the Outer Banks.  Even so, such properties seem to be becoming the most recent investment scheme with Outer Banks housing appreciating at an annual rate of 10% or more.  The average sale price for a single-family home leapt 34 percent to $375,299 in 2002.

The SC Council on Coastal Futures meets this week to study the past 25 years of the state's coastal regulations to see if SC Ocean and Coastal Resource Management rules should be changed.  It  intends to make regulations fairer to developers, residents and governments while managing growth and protecting the environment.

The Hilton Head South Island Dredging Association (SIDA) hired a local public relations firm that employs state Sen. Scott Richardson to help make the association's case for a controversial plan to dump dredge spoil into Calibogue Sound.   Richardson says there is no way he will involve himself with this.  He, in fact, pulled his name off a bill that would remove state oversight over dredging projects in marinas and waterways in planned communities whose restrictive covenants were recorded before 1966 due to his concerns over environmental damage.  The SIDA muck is now to be barged to a federally controlled offshore site near the mouth of Port Royal Sound. Federal officials are moving to keep the offshore site open to dumping.

Hunting Island State Park, with a shrinking beach, now has its conservation programs promoting its eight miles of inland trails throughout the island.  Park Manager Ray Stevens says 1.2 million people from 46 states and 14 foreign countries visited last year.

FLORIDA AND GEORGIA
Though in a deep hole and cutting services, one of Florida's "few budgetary bright spots: Both the Senate and the House set aside millions for statewide beach renourishment projects."  Now it is going to be in two deep holes.

In Palm Beach, FL, the town's 10-year Strategic Plan is done.  It includes the 10-year $42.5 million project to renourish roughly eight miles of eroded shoreline ($23.5 million town bonds with another $20 million will be paid by the state and Palm Beach County).  It is going to reevaluate the project as it moves through each phase.  It plans to continue to pressure the Corps and Palm Beach County to honor their commitments to expedite replacement or upgrading of the Lake Worth Inlet sand transfer plant.   It also is considering legal action to require the Army Corps to pay for beach restoration made necessary by the creation and dredging of Lake Worth Inlet.  It will seek modifications to state laws so properties down drift from the inlets are exempt from Erosion Control Line requirements, which fix a permanent boundary between public and private properties on the beach before renourishment can begin.

At Ft. Pierce Beach, 300,000 cubic yards of sand will be pumped onto the beach at South Jetty Park soon in the latest effort to combat erosion.  Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Co. has a $2.4 million contract to pump sand from Capron Shoal onto 3,000 feet of beach just south of the Fort Pierce Inlet.  Sand was added to this same section of beach in 1998.  The Corps will do a larger renourishment project next year.  The Corps has not adequately considered the dredgings on bryozoans, microscopic creatures that live in the sand off Fort Pierce's coast.  It also, as usual, has ignored the further erosion caused by this.

At Cape San Blas, workers are installing ProTecTube III, a sandbag staircase laid out in 400-foot-long sections.  Similar to the shore parallel structure which an element in the successful Holmberg Techologies' system (the owner of the ProTec Tube company has been notified of patent infringements in the past by Holmberg Technologies according to the company), the tubes are filled with water providing short term protection, becomes a sand/water slush and ultimately sand alone will be in the tubes.  The device is wrapped into existing dune systems at each end.  It is, according to its installer, "serious sand-bagging".

The replanting of ecosystem vital seagrass to protect it from dredging at Port Manatee is being called a boondoggle by the local press.  The port spent more than $700,000 per acre for the transplanted seagrass or $4 million total. The results were minimally adequate for the DEP to give the port its dredging permit.  Of the 8 acres transplanted, only 3.5 acres survived.

The beach in south Volusia County are among the most eroded on the East Coast.  Residents are seeking permission to build seawalls or jetties combined with massive renourishment.  If oceanfront homes fall into the ocean during a storm, the surge could cause a breach across the narrow barrier island.  The Silver Sands-Bethune Beach Municipal Service District Advisory Board is spending a quarter of a million dollars on engineers to study the problem.

The economic impact of the salt and freshwater fishing industry in Florida topped $7 billion, with retail sales topping $4.1 billion.  In Escambia and Santa Rosa counties alone, this had an economic impact of $200 million in 2001, creating more than 2,672 jobs and more than $119.1 million in retail sales.

MID-ATLANTIC
Stone Harbor, NJ will pay $100,000 to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation after missing a deadline to remove illegal dredge spoils from Stone Harbor Point and if not removed by April 30 it will pay $50,000 more to the foundation.  The dumping ruined prime habitat for the endangered piping plover.

The Corps has issued a permit for an experiment to grow 1 million Asian oysters in the Chesapeake Bay.  Its permission was needed because of potential navigational hazards and disturbance of bottom sediments.  Environmental groups and scientists have questioned the wisdom of the experiment, saying it could lead to unforeseen diseases or ecological damage to the Bay and aquatic life.

NORTHEAST
At Edgartown on Martha's Vineyard, The Shellfish Department wants $40,000 for an estuaries study of Edgartown Great Pond. It also wants $187,800 for the dredge management program - the bulk of which will be recouped through payments for assisting other dredging projects.

GREAT LAKES
Chromium has spread throughout White Lake in Michigan and that removal of the highest concentrations of that metal in Tannery Bay will help the lake.  Dredging is already being done to remove contaminated sediments, including PCB's, in Tannery Bay.  The healthiest areas for the benthic community, however, are areas where that community is most at risk because it is prime property for marina development.

The problem at Gross Point Shores, MI, is accretion --of all the wrong kind.  Muck, debris, foul smells, dead matter, etc. are clogging the shorelines along Lake Shore Road.  Property owners have applied to the MDEQ for a permit to remove approximately 125,000 cubic yards of sediments from the accretion zone.

At Presque Isle State Park, PA, state and Corps officials are putting more sand on the beaches by the first big holiday weekend of the swimming season.  $850,000 is the cost of spreading lake-dredged sand on some beaches and redistributing sand that accumulates near some of the 55 offshore stone breakwaters.  These were another Corps experiment of limited, if any, success at stopping erosion on the island.  The 1992 breakwaters cost $23.7 million and have left the shoreline heavily scalloped and requiring annual $1 million renourishments.  If, according to a Corps, these are "working as intended", we must be very concerned about the Corps competence and its lack of concern of our environment and our tax dollars.

GULF
The Sierra Club is protesting oil exploration on Padre Island, TX maintaining that the increased traffic on area beaches, sand and wildlife displacement associated with oil and gas drilling make it difficult for sea turtles to nest and develop.  It hopes for a government buyout of the leases.  These, however, provided $11 million for the school fund last year. A study by the USGS of the Padre Island National Seashore area showed that about $107 million could be generated for the school fund if all the state-owned minerals available near the local seashore were extracted.  No word from the USGS on the cost to the environment and tourism from this mining.

The Port of Houston is seeking comment on its Bayport facility.  The Corps has mandated that nearly 20 acres of jurisdictional wetlands must be replaced.  The Port is mitigating that acreage at a three-and-a-half to one ratio.  There is some debate regarding the wetland replacement ratio..  In addition, 200 acres of marshlands are to be created in Galveston Bay from dredge material.

WEST
Encinitas, CA's Shoreline Preservation Committee is considering dumping 50,000 cubic yards of sand from a bluff-top resort project onto the most northerly beach in Leucadia, called Grandview Beach.  The project needs approval of the state Parks and Recreation Department which is still smarting over a similar project at South Cardiff State Beach in 1995. There the sand moved from a construction site was just too red and looked like dirt.  The Committee also heard the Corps will place the 550,000 cubic yards of sand it plans to dredge from San Diego Harbor into waters just offshore Imperial Beach. The sand is expected to wash onto the beach.  The earlier plan called for dumping the sand into a remote offshore dumpsite.  If it had done this, the California Coastal Commission could have forced it to fund additional sand replenishment on beaches.

Bellingham Bay, WA, is dredging 8,000 cubic yards of contaminated sediment from a former boatyard at Squalicum Harbor this fall.  The work would clean up one of 13 polluted sites in and around Bellingham Bay. The bay is contaminated with many toxins, notably an estimated 10 tons of mercury spread through about 2.4 million yards of sediment.  Each cleanup project is accompanied by creation of new fish habitat.  A 2.5-acre sloped area underwater off the Squalicum Harbor Marina breakwater with clean sediments from the planned maintenance dredging of Squalicum Creek Waterway poured in a deep water site next to the breakwater.

INTERNATIONAL
In Dubai, uncontrolled coastal development on its beaches has led to erosion and the undermining and collapse of coastal structures according to Dubai's director of public construction projects.  A plan to provide long-term coastal protection by providing rock revetments and corniche walls includes installing sandbags to protect back beach areas.

Areas of Cape Town in South Africa may be underwater within 20-30 years as sea levels rise.  This would result in the flooding of the Cape Flats and turn Table Mountain and the southern section of the peninsula into an island.  The city is already planning for a tunnel or suspension bridge to link it to the new island.  The report on this is still underwraps for fear of causing panic and havoc with property prices.

Acapulco will use 80 million pesos (US$7.4 million) to improve water and sewage treatment plants over the next two years in an effort to clean up its polluted bay.  A report found that water contamination levels at 16 resorts did not meet governmental standards for bodies of water used for recreational purposes and had caused health problems among residents and tourists.