Save Flagler's Beach

Quote from ACOA National Economic Development Manuals…

“Fitted with powerful pumps, the [hopper] dredges suck dredged material from the channel bottom through long intake pipes, called drag arms, and store it in the hoppers.”

Dredging is continuous, all around the world. Navigational inlets, harbors, ship channels, ports, open ocean. Some dredges have tooth-like grinders powerful enough to pulverize rock. Much of the damage they do is hidden under the sea. Damage to our shorelines is more obvious. Read on, and you’ll see why dredging literally sucks. Our emphasis in red.

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Navigation study for Canaveral Harbor, Florida – August 1990

FINAL FEASIBILITY REPORT AND ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT STATEMENT – 81240. US Army Corps of Engineers, Jacksonville District South Atlantic Division. CANAVERAL HARBOR FEASIBILITY STUDY – APPENDIX E – COASTAL ENGINEERING ANALYSIS. IMPACTS OF IMPROVEMENTS ON LITTORAL PROCESSES.

Abstract: (from a very long paper)

The US Army Corps of Engineers dredged an initial 27 foot deep channel almost 14 miles offshore to keep the shipping channel clear, but in fact created a massive, hydraulically self-sustaining open pit mine offshore serving to denude the onshore supply and coastline.

Initially, in 1951, 325,000 cubic yards of sand was removed, from 1963 to 1979 the average yearly take was 675,000 cubic yards, and from 1979 to 1990 when the study was made the average was 925,000 cubic yards.

The constant dredging to keep the channel clear and further deepening the original channel continued to promote the loss of both the offshore and onshore material. Studies show the creation of the original channel caused the previously accreting shorelines to begin eroding at incredible rates over forty miles south of the channel dredging. Prior to the dredging, the shoreline was accreting tens of feet per year, so for the visible shorelines to erode in some areas hundreds of feet the offshore had to experience enormous losses in its seabed sediment resources. The effect of the channel dredging was to bring about a steepened and deepened offshore profile, allowing greater storm energies to strike onshore, while at the same time creating a replacement demand resulting in an erosive profile for the nearshore.

The report is thorough, quite comprehensive and detailed, and offers an excellent example of the lack of understanding of coastal physics by the Corps and coastal engineering consultants, and how man can effect massive shoreline changes even with a relatively small project, with far less sediment removal than is taking place off our United Kingdom east coast.

That the dredging took place 14 miles from the coast and brought about so much erosion of the coast is highly significant.
SOURCE: Marinet is a UK-based volunteer organization that monitors issues about seas and shorelines around the world.

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ERDC Sea Turtle Response Supports Dredging Operations

Dredging for the Louisiana Barrier Berm project resulted in 3 sea turtle mortalities during the trawling operations. This was highly unusual. However, it caused all hopper dredging in the Gulf (not just work with the Barrier Berm project) to be temporarily shut down until the USACE could provide a risk assessment and supporting documentation for all proposed hopper projects in the Gulf that were being held up.

An ERDC team of experts led by Ms. Dena Dickerson (ERDC-EL) was able to do the risk assessments and provide all necessary documentation. The ERDC team drafted all the communications for the USACE to NMFS on these issues. Throughout the Barrier Berm project and all other Gulf dredging projects, the team has provided daily monitoring reports and updates on entrainment risk assessments. No dredging time was lost in the Gulf and NMFS was able to proceed with their ESA consultation without delays. The team was able to accomplish this as a result of the Sea Turtle Database Warehouse compiled under the USACE Dredging Operations Technology Support program and the Threatened & Endangered Species Take Risk Assessment Program (STTRAP) started under the Dredging Operations Environmental Research program. Team members working with Ms. Dickerson included Mr. Craig Theriot and Ms. Dana Derrick May. (Editor: Is there a conflict of interest here?)
SOURCE: 2011 Army Corps of Engineers Report found here

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Netherlands – Assessment by Delft University

Dutch researchers from Delft University produced a paper assessing the impact of Offshore Aggregate Dredging on the shoreline given at the 20th-21st February 2003 European marine sand and gravel Conference (EMSAGG). It shows by graphical and mathematical models the mechanism that brings about draw down and shoreline loss by dredging offshore.

However, it does not appear to do more than call for caution and more studies. Whilst these are ongoing no doubt the dredging will continue to destroy our coastlines. Read the full paper here
SOURCE: Marinet is a UK-based volunteer organization that monitors issues about seas and shorelines around the world. 

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Dredging damage in Alabama – October 2005

Scott Douglas, eminent coastal engineer with the University of Alabama, leaves no doubt as to erosion brought about by dredging. Where this was carried out by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, it has dramatically harmed Alabama beaches and necessitated ongoing restoration projects costing the public about $28 million. He maintains that such practices caused hundreds of millions of dollars of losses in a recent hurricane, saying “Hurricane Ivan came ashore on a beach that offered vastly diminished protection from such a storm.” Incredibly, in the same article, Corps of Engineers officials actually acknowledged that the dredging and dumping practices may have caused long-term problems.

The Corps of Engineers’ prevailing failure on Alabama’s shoreline, Douglas contends, is the Mobile Ship Channel. Douglas points out that since 1939, the corps has maintained a 45-foot-deep ship channel cut right through the sandy slope that supports Dauphin Island and the Fort Morgan Peninsula. He says that sand, moving in from the east on the wave-driven conveyor belt, falls into the ship channel, where it collects until the corps dredges it up. Until recent years, the corps dumped the sand several miles offshore, far from the shoal that supports Dauphin Island’s beaches and the littoral zone where tides would take the sand ashore.

Five years ago, Dauphin Island property owners sued the corps, claiming that the channel had caused the dramatic erosion on the island’s west end. The case is ongoing. Meanwhile, the Federal Emergency Management Agency erected a $1 million protective sand wall, or berm, but it washed away. Then Ivan came along, destroying 33 island homes and sucking away tons of sand.
SOURCE: Marinet is a UK-based volunteer organization that monitors issues about seas and shorelines around the world.

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Flawed Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) studies on dredging impact – November 2005

A new paper further evidences that we have long found, that much of the research on the damage resulting from offshore aggregate dredging (or, as these reports usually show, the non-effects) are produced by those profiting from this practice.

The situation we have in the UK appears the same in the USA as shown by the paper ‘Flawed studies assess dredge-and-fill programs to protect coastlines’ published in the October 2005 issue of BioScience, the monthly journal of the American Institute of Biological Sciences, appears to show.

Marine scientists Charles H. Peterson of the University of North Carolina and Melanie J. Bishop, now of the University of Technology in Sydney, Australia, have reported that, despite expensive, multidecadal monitoring, the majority of studies of the ecological impacts of beach nourishment are scientifically inadequate and suffer from critical flaws, improper analyses, and unjustified interpretations.

Peterson and Bishop point out how the activity can bury shallow reefs and degrade other beach habitats, depressing nesting in sea turtles and reducing the densities of prey for shorebirds, fishes, and crabs, and that the US Army Corps of Engineers and state permitting agencies, which oversee most of the monitoring studies, do not have expertise adequate to assess them.

Peterson and Bishop conclude that reform of agency practices is urgently needed as evidence of the cumulative risk of severe ecological impacts grows. Their survey discovered that monitoring is typically conducted by project promoters with no independent peer review. See also www.aibs.org
SOURCE: Marinet is a UK-based volunteer organization that monitors issues about seas and shorelines around the world.

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