Why?

Many of us are becoming ever more anxious over the deteriorating conditions of our coastlines.  Some have championed such proven innovations as Holmberg Technologies to stem the loss of our coastal resources.  This may be premature in that we may be perceived more as salesmen for a product rather than honest brokers for our coastal environments.  By educating our political leadership, our government officials and our citizens to the devastating effects of our current coastal policies, we may find they will readily seek such positive solutions as Holmberg and other sustainable options.

Of course, this puts us in the position of concentrating on the negative, rather than the positive.  Given how grim our current coastal crisis is becoming, we have little choice.

Beach renourishment is not sustainable
This year, Steve Higgins, a board member of the dredging lobbying group American Coastal Coalition and the beach management official for Broward County, Florida, declared that that area is about to have its last renourishment as the accessible and affordable offshore sand this requires is now depleted.  Last year, a Corps' project engineer said that areas on its west coast also no longer have sand to mine.  This means the most ardent supporters of renourishment are saying, in effect, it is not sustainable.  Indirectly, they confirm that beach nourishment is not a benign process, is wastefully depleting the very material we must have to save our shorelines and is becoming too expensive to continue.  It is both fiscally and physically unsustainable.

Offshore shoals protect the shore
Not being said is that offshore shoals, now strip-mined for this, provide a damping effect on wave energy striking the shore.  With many shoals now removed or reduced, greater energy is reaching the shore creating more erosion and magnifying storm damage.  A 2002 report by Minerals Management Service, the federal agency tasked with finding this sand, confirms this.

Sealife is at risk
The damage to sealife is also significant.  The media readily reports the sea turtle hash made by dredging equipment.  Even more significant, but less visible or sensational, is the damage done directly to benthic life and seabed habitat.  Strip-mined areas no longer can support life for months or years after the seabed is dredged.  The fines and silt from sand ground down and lost to the system during the process can suffocate productive distant habitats, including reefs.  The often incompatible sediment or "shell hash" dumped on the beach smothers shorelife.  Even the Corps -- in a 2001 study attempting to minimize the biological problems of this process-- reports negative impacts in both on and off shore areas for months or longer.  The need for cyclical renourishments can be cumulative to shoreline ecosystems over time.

Dredging is extensive
Navigational dredging continues its unnatural alteration of shoreline rivers, inlets and wetlands.  It is the major cause of much of our current erosion, usually attributed to "nature taking its course".  While other manmade alterations --dams withholding naturally replenishing sediments, traditionally engineered "hard" erosion control structures, development of wetlands, sea level rise from global warning-- all contribute, the most damaging agent in the United States is the dredging industry's activity along and off our coastlines.  Its most obvious manifestation is the deep dredging projects of commercial ports.  Less obvious are the numerous smaller inlets being dredged to accommodate an ever larger recreational boating fleets.  The Intracoastal Waterway changes coastal hydraulics all along the East Coast with its continuous dredging.

Megaships require deeper dredging
Now, all along our coastlines, ports are dredging even deeper channels to accommodate container megaships.  Most may never see any significant return on this massive investment or, most probably, any significant traffic from such megaships.  The collateral damage, however, may far exceed the income to be gained by the few ports likely to be profitable after this multi-billion tax dollar dredging subsidy.  This damage --abetted by all the other dredging activities-- includes increased coastal erosion, the loss of both salt and fresh water wetlands, saltwater penetration deep into the interior fresh water systems and coastal fresh water supplies threatened directly by breaching aquifers (as probable with the Floridan Aquifer in Savannah) or indirectly by intrusion.  Natural habitats and ecosystems are seriously harmed, if not destroyed.

A textbook example of poor coastal management
Louisiana is the sad example of what this can do to our coastal resources. With the massive loss of its coastal wetlands, Louisiana can now be considered the dying canary for rest of our coastlines. Almost anyone following coastal issues can easily discern this same pattern of damage happening throughout our coastal regions ...that is anyone except, it seems, coastal management regulatory agencies at local, state and federal levels.  This acquiescence to a politically powerful industry may be witting or unwitting.  The consequences are the same in either case: the loss of our coastal resources.

Much more is at risk
What are our coastal resources?  Some might only think of the obvious commercial value of real estate and tourism.  Our seafood industry is also at risk as most of our fisheries are dependent our coastal estuaries and wetlands as incubators.  These also are indispensable to much of our bird life including migrating and sport species.  All of this is loss with the loss of our barrier islands and other naturally protective landforms.  As we lose these, the mainland is open to the full energy of storms.  Salt water begins to advance upstream and into fresh water streams and wetlands.  Fresh water supplies are compromised as salt water intrudes water bearing soil supplying wells and aquifers are breached.  All coastal life is then compromised.

Dredging isn't the answer
Dredging is not the solution, it is the main problem.  If it were sustainable, the Corps would not now be soliciting for supplemental concepts to increase the time periods between the required renourishments.  These are now decreasing due to these same renourishments.  This is underscored by ironic title of the solicitation, "Sustainability of Renourishment, Miami Beach, Beach Erosion Control and Hurricane Protection Project".  Miami is out of sand.  One only has to know Miami is at the receiving end of the Corps and its consultants "river of sand" theory to discount the Corps ability to comprehend or react to the coming disaster.

We must organize to literally turn the tide against current policies and practices now dissolving our coastlines.  We must confront those institutions (the Corps, state agencies, etc.) and organizations (the American Coastal Coalition, Beach and Shore Preservations Associations, etc.) promoting such practices so that the public is aware of this.  We must work with all interests --shipping, development, environmental, etc.-- to prevent more damage and mitigate that already done.  If we are to save our coastlines and ourselves, we must act boldly and with dedication to the belief that we do have the means to reverse this.  We can bequeath healthy coastlines and the life systems these sustain to our children.  To do this, we must commit ourselves now, today, to make it so.  Time --and sand-- is short and the water rises.