Post by ferris1248 on Jun 4, 2024 9:55:39 GMT -5
Lisa Hendrickson is almost out of sand.
Hendrickson is the mayor of Redington Shores, Florida, a well-heeled beach town in Pinellas County. Her town occupies a small section of a razor-thin barrier island that stretches down the western side of the sprawling Tampa Bay metro area, dividing cities like Tampa and St. Petersburg from the Gulf of Mexico. Many of her constituents have an uninterrupted view of the ocean.
The town’s only protection from the Gulf of Mexico’s increasingly erratic storms is a pristine beach that draws millions of tourists every year — but that beach is disappearing fast. A series of storms, culminating in last fall’s Hurricane Idalia, have eroded most of the sand that protects Redington Shores and the towns around it, leaving residents just one big wave away from water overtaking their homes.
This perilous situation is the result of a standoff between local residents and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the federal agency that handles flood prevention and protects many of the nation’s beaches. The Corps often rebuilds eroded beaches by hauling in thousands of tons of sand, but the agency is refusing to deliver $42 million of new sand to Pinellas County unless the area’s coastal property owners grant public access to the slivers of beach behind their homes. Hundreds of these property owners, however, are in turn refusing to sign documents that grant these points of access, which are known as easements. The faceoff has brought the area’s storm recovery to a near standstill.
The Corps says it first raised the issue with Pinellas back in 2017, but tensions started rising last year after Idalia eroded the area’s beaches to a dangerous degree, creating a desperate need for new protective sand.
The Corps requires that easements be “perpetual,” which means that the public will always be able to access the beach area behind an owner’s property. The agency says this is only so that it has the ability to help out after future storms: When a hurricane wipes out a beach, the Corps often swoops in to pay for an emergency beach replenishment just weeks later, ensuring homes don’t wash away. The agency says that it can’t commit to doing this emergency work unless it can be sure that beach access will remain public for good. It also says that it needs easements from all property owners in a given area, because nourishment projects don’t work unless they’re continuous along an entire stretch of sand.
Hendrickson is the mayor of Redington Shores, Florida, a well-heeled beach town in Pinellas County. Her town occupies a small section of a razor-thin barrier island that stretches down the western side of the sprawling Tampa Bay metro area, dividing cities like Tampa and St. Petersburg from the Gulf of Mexico. Many of her constituents have an uninterrupted view of the ocean.
The town’s only protection from the Gulf of Mexico’s increasingly erratic storms is a pristine beach that draws millions of tourists every year — but that beach is disappearing fast. A series of storms, culminating in last fall’s Hurricane Idalia, have eroded most of the sand that protects Redington Shores and the towns around it, leaving residents just one big wave away from water overtaking their homes.
This perilous situation is the result of a standoff between local residents and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the federal agency that handles flood prevention and protects many of the nation’s beaches. The Corps often rebuilds eroded beaches by hauling in thousands of tons of sand, but the agency is refusing to deliver $42 million of new sand to Pinellas County unless the area’s coastal property owners grant public access to the slivers of beach behind their homes. Hundreds of these property owners, however, are in turn refusing to sign documents that grant these points of access, which are known as easements. The faceoff has brought the area’s storm recovery to a near standstill.
The Corps says it first raised the issue with Pinellas back in 2017, but tensions started rising last year after Idalia eroded the area’s beaches to a dangerous degree, creating a desperate need for new protective sand.
The Corps requires that easements be “perpetual,” which means that the public will always be able to access the beach area behind an owner’s property. The agency says this is only so that it has the ability to help out after future storms: When a hurricane wipes out a beach, the Corps often swoops in to pay for an emergency beach replenishment just weeks later, ensuring homes don’t wash away. The agency says that it can’t commit to doing this emergency work unless it can be sure that beach access will remain public for good. It also says that it needs easements from all property owners in a given area, because nourishment projects don’t work unless they’re continuous along an entire stretch of sand.