Word: beaching
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...water to absorb and attenuate the force of the waves. Harry Cook, a Texas shrimper, is considering wire mesh and old tires to keep the bay waters from chewing away any more of his bluffs, which he is losing at the rate of 10 ft. yearly. On Long Island, beach residents shore up dunes with driftwood and old tires. And in Carlsbad, Calif., the community has come up with a number of ideas, from planting plastic kelp to laying a sausage-like tube along the beach in order to trap sand normally washed away during high tide...
There are more substantive approaches to beach protection. When properly designed and built, they can slow beach erosion. Nonetheless, most are ineffective in the long run and can actually exacerbate damage. A seawall, for example, may protect threatened property behind it, but it often hastens the retreat of the beach in front as waves dash against the wall and scour away sand. Louis Sodano, mayor of Monmouth Beach, N.J., knows the process firsthand. "When I moved here 28 years ago, you could walk the whole beach," he remembers. "Now the waves slap against the wall. We've lost...
...variant on the seawall that can also hasten erosion is riprap -- rocks and boulders piled into makeshift barriers to absorb the force of incoming waves. While seawalls and riprap run parallel to the beach, groin fields extend directly out into the water. Made up of short piers of stone extending from the beach and spaced 100 yds. or so apart, they can slow erosion by trapping sand carried by crosscurrents. But down current, the lack of drifting sand can result in worse erosion. "It's like robbing Peter to pay Paul," says Leatherman -- a concept the O'Malleys of Westhampton...
Jetties can cause beach larceny on an even grander scale. Long concrete or rock structures, they jut out into the water to keep inlets and harbors navigable by keeping sand and silt from drifting in. Like groin fields, jetties can keep sand from replenishing beaches down current. The construction 90 years ago of a pair of jetties to improve the harbor at Charleston, S.C., altered currents and natural sand drift so drastically that there is no beach left at high tide at nearby Folly Beach. In Florida an estimated 80% to 85% of the beach erosion on the state...
...Federal Government's record on beach protection is spotty. In 1982 Congress removed about 600 miles of coastline and 187 islands -- about 1% of U.S. coastal areas -- from eligibility for federal flood insurance on new construction. The Senate is considering a bill, passed by the House in June, that would help people relocate their houses away from eroding beaches. But the Reagan Administration is cool toward a proposal now before Congress, introduced in March by Democratic Senator John Breaux of Louisiana, that would identify all threatened coastal wetlands and provide as much as $40 million over two years for their...