A tiny marine bristle worm has stopped dredges from pumping sand along Satellite Beach and Indian Harbour Beach for the past decade, while officials spent almost $68 million bulking up the oceanfront to the north and south.
The towns got a piece of almost $30 million over four years in trucked sand for patching dunes after the hurricanes, but some surfside residents and officials pined for the dredge-and-fill projects that widened other high-profile Brevard County beaches.
The lowly Sabellariid worm and its flat-rock perch stood in the way.
But a new draft plan under review works around the environmental roadblock. It would bring another $30 million in sand — dredged offshore, then trucked in — to the stretch called “Mid Reach” as soon as spring 2012.
“It’s a very good compromise,” Satellite Beach Mayor Joe Ferrante said. “The hurricanes of 2004 showed how vulnerable we were without beach renourishment. We lost all of our beach dune crossovers. . . . We took many, many hits.”
The roughly 31,800 truckloads of sand would go on 7.8 miles of beach, from just south of Patrick Air Force Base to just north of Indialantic.
Residents have until Wednesday to voice opinions on the $195 million, 50-year plan, which includes resanding the two beaches about every three years. The plan will require congressional approval.
Dredges would pump almost 575,000 cubic yards of sand from shoals about five miles off Cape Canaveral to the Trident Basin west spoil area, 70 acres owned by the military on the north side of Port Canaveral. Trucks would haul the sand to several beach access points, drive it down the beach, and bulldozers would smooth it.
The dredging would happen about every six years and the trucking every three years, or as needed — for about $7 million each time.
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers officials say, despite the risks and cost, the project’s economics add up. They say that for every $1 spent, it would pump about $3 into the local economy in the form of property protection and tourism.
“Quite frankly, I didn’t think we’d ever get it through,” said Rob Varley, executive director of the Space Coast Office of Tourism. “I think they finally looked at it and said if we don’t do something, we’re going to lose a lot of buildings.”
Varley sees tourists, as well as sea turtles, snubbing the Space Coast if the beach narrows too much.
A worm’s life
Brevard’s major beach build-backs started in 2000, when dredges fattened Cocoa Beach and Cape Canaveral for $23.1 million. Then in 2002, a $15.5 million dredging project widened Indialantic and Melbourne Beach.
Dredges returned to all four beaches in 2005 to repair erosion from the previous year’s hurricanes, at a cost of $16.8 million.
All told, $55 million was spent in five years.
Add to that a $12.4 million dredging that began last month to bring sand to 3.8 miles of beach, from Spessard Holland North Beach Park to just north of Indialantic.
Satellite Beach and Indian Harbour Beach were left out of these large dredging projects, though, because of the coquina rock reef and a marine worm that clings to it.
The worm creates rock-like outcroppings that, along with its coquina base, the National Marine Fisheries Service deems essential fish habitat.
The worms secrete mucus that sand grains get embedded in, forming cones where the worms hide, algae clings and fish and sea turtles feed.
The 2012 project is expected to bury up to three acres of the 31-acre reef within the project area, as trucked-in sand oozes from the beach over rock in the surf zone.
After only three days buried, about half the worms would die, according to research by Nancy Sloan, who did her master’s thesis at Florida Tech on the worms.
The reefs they form help protect property by blunting wave energy and keeping sand in place.
“The way the worms build their reefs, it actually protects the beaches,” Sloan said. “It helps to suspend sediment.”
Artificial approach
To make up for burying the worm reef, the corps plans to put 4.8 acres of prefabricated concrete rock mats seaward of the existing rock. They would embed the mats with 4- to 12-inch coquina stones, forming 8-foot by 15-foot blocks linked together by steel cables. They would sink the mats in water about 14 to 16 feet deep, about 1,000 feet offshore.
The $7 million artificial reef accounts for about a quarter of the initial project’s cost.
“We expect it to function like most other artificial reef structures,” said Paul Stodola, a biologist with the corps’ environmental branch in Jacksonville.
Critics of the plan fear that such a reef won’t draw as many worms, fish or other marine life as the natural coquina reef.
But studies in 2006 by the Brevard County Natural Resources Management Office found the worms clung at comparable rates to limestone test platforms put on the seabed offshore of the project area.
Officials said the more surgical method of trucking sand to the beach is needed to protect the worm and coquina reefs.
Dredging sand there would bury the worms and too much of coquina they inhabit and build upon, which serves as prime grounds for shrimp, crabs, grouper, snapper and sea turtles.
A beach divided
Coastal owners, however, remain divided about the prospect of the dredged and hauled sand.
Susan Brown of Satellite Beach, for example, thinks it all will wash away, entomb the reef-forging marine worms and harm surf fishing.
“The ocean’s going to take it back,” Brown said as she fished behind her beachside condo at Sandpoint Towers — guarded by a concrete seawall. “The bottom line is they’re wasting money. Those dollars are not free. They come from me and you.”
Others such as Chip Rohlke see new sand on the Mid Reach beaches as crucial for protecting property and the local economy.
“There’s sand out there, but one good storm, and it’s gone,” said the real estate broker who owns a unit at the Cristal condominium complex in Indian Harbour Beach.
Brown said that will always be the case, regardless of how much sand the trucks and dredges bring. And she doesn’t buy the premise that a thinner beach means fewer tourists.
“They’re still going to come,” she said. “The best thing we can do is leave it all alone.”
Time, or the next storm, may tell.
The $7 million artificial reef accounts for about a quarter of the initial project’s cost.
“We expect it to function like most other artificial reef structures,” said Paul Stodola, a biologist with the corps’ environmental branch in Jacksonville.
Critics of the plan fear that such a reef won’t draw as many worms, fish or other marine life as the natural coquina reef.
But studies in 2006 by the Brevard County Natural Resources Management Office found the worms clung at comparable rates to limestone test platforms put on the seabed offshore of the project area.
Officials said the more surgical method of trucking sand to the beach is needed to protect the worm and coquina reefs.
Dredging sand there would bury the worms and too much of coquina they inhabit and build upon, which serves as prime grounds for shrimp, crabs, grouper, snapper and sea turtles.
A beach divided
Coastal owners, however, remain divided about the prospect of the dredged and hauled sand.
Susan Brown of Satellite Beach, for example, thinks it all will wash away, entomb the reef-forging marine worms and harm surf fishing.
“The ocean’s going to take it back,” Brown said as she fished behind her beachside condo at Sandpoint Towers — guarded by a concrete seawall. “The bottom line is they’re wasting money. Those dollars are not free. They come from me and you.”
Others such as Chip Rohlke see new sand on the Mid Reach beaches as crucial for protecting property and the local economy.
“There’s sand out there, but one good storm, and it’s gone,” said the real estate broker who owns a unit at the Cristal condominium complex in Indian Harbour Beach.
Brown said that will always be the case, regardless of how much sand the trucks and dredges bring. And she doesn’t buy the premise that a thinner beach means fewer tourists.
“They’re still going to come,” she said. “The best thing we can do is leave it all alone.”
Time, or the next storm, may tell.
Source: Florida Today, March 7, 2010
