Record Funding From State Makes 1996 A Good Year For Florida Beaches

May 24, 1996

GAINESVILLE — In the wake of the busiest hurricane season in 60 years, it looks like 1996 will be a good year for Florida beaches after Legislators approved a record amount of funding for beach projects.

While President Bill Clinton has said he wants to end all federal funding of beach nourishment, lawmakers in the Sunshine State have earmarked nearly $47 million for beach projects, including $31 million to restore and rebuild beaches and dunes damaged by Hurricane Opal.

“It’s going to be a pretty good year,” said Robert Dean, chairman of coastal and oceanographic engineering at the University of Florida College of Engineering and a longtime proponent of beach nourishment. “Of course, Hurricane Opal played a big role.”

An estimated $10.5 million will go to beach restoration in Panama City Beach, one of the areas hit hardest by last year’s storms. Dean hopes the state money could reignite beach nourishment efforts along the self-proclaimed “World’s Most Beautiful Beaches,” where a proposed $31 million beach nourishment project has been shelved. If the project had been completed prior to last year’s storms, it could have prevented about $50 million in damage, according to estimates by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

“I think the Legislature has been impressed by that,” Dean said. “It’s a good investment.”

One of the nation’s leading experts in coastal engineering, Dean believes lawmakers, who approved the record appropriations last month, also have been impressed with a long-awaited report released recently by the National Research Council, which said artificial beach-building offered worthwhile protection to coastal towns and could be a boon to tourism. He called the report an endorsement of beach nourishment.

“I think beach nourishment does work and it’s a good method for controlling erosion,” Dean said. “Not in every location, but in many locations it’s economical and beneficial.”

St. Augustine Beach resident Gladys Humphreys believes beach nourishment may be the only way to save the beach where she lives. In the 25 years since she moved there, she has watched the sand continually erode behind her house. In 1971, she estimates there was almost 500 feet of sand between her house and the water. Today it’s less than 90 feet, and that’s only after sand dredged from the nearby inlet was put back on the beach.

Now, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is in the process of designing a long-term, multi-million dollar federal nourishment project that is tentatively set for the turn of the century. With Clinton’s position to end federal funding for such projects, Humphreys wonders where the money will come from to pay for beach nourishment since 80 percent of the cost was expected to be paid for by the federal government. She’s considered selling her home, but would like to hold on to it for her children and grandkids to enjoy. “It’s pretty terrible,” she said. “Rationally, you think you should sell. Emotionally, you don’t want to.”

Clinton’s action to end federal funding has mobilized people and initiated a lot of action. For the first time, a national lobbying organization for beaches, The American Coastal Coalition (ACC), has been formed. On Wednesday, Florida Sen. Connie Mack and New Jersey Sen. Bill Bradley submitted the Shore Protection Act of 1996 to reinstate federal funding for beach nourishment.

ACC President Howard Marlowe, whose organization helped develop the bill, called it “a declaration that the federal government will not turn its back on the nation’s coasts.”

Still, the situation regarding federal funding remains unsettled, Dean said. Typically, the federal government has paid for about 50 percent of beach nourishment projects, and the state has picked up 75 percent of the non-federal share, and the rest is funded locally. Dean said he’s amazed at the misperception in the United States about the amount of money that has been spent nourishing beaches. In reality, federal spending on beaches has averaged about $33 million a year.

“You know, that’s less than a fighter plane,” he said. “And if you look at the benefit of beaches due to travel and tourism, the income to the United States dwarfs what’s been spent on it by a thousand times.”