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White sandy beach with a strip of Florida‘S gulf coast Three hurricanes wreaked havoc last year, prompting a multimillion-dollar effort to repair the coastline, which is the region’s economic engine.
Crews are working with dredges, trucks and pipelines along a 35-mile (56-kilometer) stretch of coastline in Pinellas County, which includes cities like Clearwater BeachIndian Rocks Beach, Bellaire Beach and Redington Beach. It is a major tourist destination still recovering from hurricanes Helen, Milton and Debbie.
Helene was most destructive to beach towns, even though it made landfall far to the north. Twelve people died due to the severe storm surge, which reached a height of 8 feet (2.4 m) in some places in Pinellas County.
In recent years, the US Army Corner Engineers played a major role in the restoration of the beach, but not this time. The Corps wants private landowners to sign up for permanent easements that would allow the government access forever – a change that has met with stiff resistance.
So Pinellas County is renovating the beach itself, and spending more than $125 million in tourism tax revenue to cover the cost. The county also has an amenity program, but because some property owners will not sign up, there will be gaps in beach renourishment that could lead to damage in future storms.
“We’re not doing this as well as we could,” said Pinellas County Administrator Barry Burton. “Our desire is to put as much sand on the beach as possible.”
The project calls for using 2.5 million cubic yards (1.9 million cubic metres) of sand that is being dredged and pumped offshore. In places where property owners refused to sign over easements, new sand is being added to the bay side of the beach, which is public. Beaches are being widened to 100 feet (30 m).
For its part, the Army Corps said it could not justify spending millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars on beach renourishment without a permanent easement to allow access.
“The Corps cannot build a project with a ‘gap’ due to a lack of facilities,” the agency said in a statement. “Authorized by Congress, an engineered project cannot provide the level of safety when built with gaps.”
Those gaps mean that a property with sand dunes and a long beach may be next to another property with none — and that’s where storm surge will hit in future hurricanes.
In the past, the Army Corps paid about 65% of beach restoration costs. Now, Pinellas County is footing the bill alone, with money that was earmarked for a new tampa bay rays Baseball stadiums and related developments that failed.
The team’s current ballpark, Tropicana Field, was heavily damaged in Hurricane Milton last October, but is being repaired in time for next season. The Rays were sold to a new group of investors this year, and where the team will play in the future is up in the air.
The county will never be able to do beach work like this again, said Public Works Director Kelly Hammer Levy.
“This is the last and only time,” she said. “So it’s really important that moving forward, we have federal support.”