We need to decide which beaches to save — and which ones to abandon

By Sarah Stodola

NEW YORK: Last December a surprise storm passed through Florida’s Pinellas County, ripping away beaches and wiping out half of the sand dunes from St. Petersburg to Clearwater. The damage was extensive, and all the more painful because the county had just spent about $26 million hauling in sand to build up the dunes after a hurricane had pummeled them in August. But this turn of events is far from unusual. Beach communities around the world are spending staggering sums replacing sand as big storms and rising seas wash it away. What used to be a maintenance task every 10 years or so is now often an annual event.

For many communities, engineering the beach is worth the hefty price tag to protect properties and tourism. But as climate change hastens beach erosion, trucking or shipping huge quantities of sand to replenish beaches is likely to become economically untenable and logistically impractical. Policymakers may soon have to make painful decisions about which shores and structures to save. This doesn’t necessarily spell disaster for beach lovers. Beaches were intended to move around, and they’re better off when they do. Unlike other effects of climate change that look bleaker the further into the future you look, migrating beaches could ultimately make America’s coasts healthier by providing coral reefs and wildlife affected by sand replenishment with the habitats they need to thrive.

Beachfront communities have had to maintain the sand on their shorelines ever since beaches became the holiday ideal in the early 20th century. By the mid-1930s waterfront construction in Coney Island, N.Y., Waikiki, Hawaii, and Atlantic City, N.J., had eroded beaches so much that they all had received their first infusions of sand.

The federal government became more involved in the effort in the middle of the 20th century, when protecting American shores from natural disaster became part of the mandate of the Army Corps of Engineers. The agency typically picks up more than half the tab for local beach replenishment projects, while the Federal Emergency Management Agency often steps in when beaches are destroyed by hurricanes.

Now more than ever, beach communities rely on this support to keep attracting the tourists who patronize beachfront resorts, vacation homes and rental properties. In the United States alone, beach tourists generate $36 billion in federal taxes annually. So it makes sense that the government spent an estimated $8.2 billion on beach replenishment this century alone, compared to just over $3.6 billion over the entire 20th century.

Beaches will only require more nourishment as worsening storms wash them away, sea level rise makes it harder to keep sand in place, excessive groundwater extraction causes land to sink and the rivers that once deposited sand on the coast dry up. Already beaches near San Diego and San Clemente, Calif., are shrinking by an average of 4.75 feet per year.

Without them, nothing separates the fury of the ocean from the homes, resorts and other buildings that dot the shore. Even finding sand has grown more difficult; many offshore reserves are already depleted, forcing dredging vessels to venture further offshore to find sand and dig it up from the ocean floor. In some places sand has to be transported by the truckload from inland at considerable extra cost — or even purchased from other countries. The Jewel Grande resort in Montego Bay, Jamaica, for example, imported sand all the way from the Bahamas to build up its beach before it opened for business in 2017.

Beach towns are already competing with companies that use sand to manufacture not only concrete, glass and asphalt but also cellphones, semiconductors and microchips. Global demand for sand tripled in the first two decades of this millennium. Resulting competition has led to so-called sand mafias mining it illegally in many countries, from Morocco to Indonesia, and pushing up the price around the world.

For many U.S. communities whose economies depend on beach tourism, spending tax dollars on beach replenishment may be worth it for now, but the economics are becoming less favorable every year. In Southern California the amount of sand required to replenish beaches is likely to triple by 2050, and the cost could quintuple, according to a recent study. Many swaths of the Jersey Shore already require replenishment every year or two, and if the sea there rises more than a foot over the next 30 years, as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has predicted, the need will only grow. Soon there will be no way to keep up.

Some coastal communities will eventually stop rebuilding their beaches, either abruptly or through what’s known as managed retreat, a coordinated, gradual move away from the shore that avoids shocks to property owners and residents. In these cases, the funds currently being siphoned off to shore up beaches could be redirected to more temporary buildings like modular homes or tents that can be relocated easily. The funds could also go toward government programs that buy back property, especially from homeowners, who may relocate or rent their homes from the government while it remains feasible.

Managed retreat discourages new development, as opposed to beach replenishment, which encourages it. Of course, beaches will disappear. But they may pop up elsewhere, and this is how today’s beach erosion could benefit shorelines tomorrow. While nourishment is rooted in our insistence that beaches stay in one place, in truth, beaches were never the constants we imagine them to be. Left to their own devices, they would simply shift, even as sea levels rise. Some would drift down or up the shore, or shrink and then widen again as the power of wind, waves and tides guide sand in different directions. Others would move inland. The lucky ones would actually expand. This kind of migration is natural, and even ecologically healthy, allowing beaches to support the birds, fish and coral reefs that depend on them.

In some places, this is already happening. Just south of Los Angeles, Huntington Beach is getting wider every year. In the Netherlands, Schiermonnikoog Island easily handles 300,000 visitors per year while its beach continually widens. Undeveloped barrier islands off the coast of Georgia are holding up just fine, as they are allowed to ebb, flow and adapt to changing natural conditions. Researchers who studied 184 relatively untouched islands in the Maldives found that while 42 percent were eroding, 39 percent were relatively stable and 20 percent were growing. We can’t predict how any given beach will behave when left alone, and we don’t know exactly what shape new shorelines will take. But ending nourishment does not mean saying goodbye to enjoying a day in the sand. If we get out of the way, beaches will endure.