Word: sanding
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Wrapped in desert scarves against the blowing sand, some 2,000 Chadian troops raced into southern Libya aboard four-wheel-drive Toyota pickups mounted with machine guns. The raiders overran the Maaten es Sarra military base 60 miles inside Libya and demolished all the arms and aircraft they could find. Then, traveling without lights beneath the moon and stars, the troops sped home. It was the first time Chad had invaded Libya since their border conflict began 14 years ago. Officials in N'Djamena, Chad's capital, claimed that the attack killed 1,713 Libyans and destroyed 26 planes...
...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 100 ft. of beach in the past 28 years...
...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 Beach understand all too well, since it was a neighboring groin field that robbed their beach...
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...
...Cruz. Still, he admits, the Army Engineers "have done better recently." Says Charles Rooney, the corps's chief of civil projects in New York: "The state of the art in coastal engineering has improved. We understand more than we used to. We build smaller to allow the bypassing of sand. We try to be less disruptive. Done correctly, groin construction and jetty construction can stabilize beaches without causing problems...