Beach Nourishment

Beach Nourishment

Firstly, according to the United States Environmental Protection Agency Office, beach nourishment is, simply stated, the introduction of sediment onto a beach. In most cases, the 

sediment is sand and the beach is in an eroded condition. In other words, in order to counter the effects of erosion (and hence removal) of sand on a beach, the agency takes a ‘soft’ (non-engineering, temporary) solution- replenishing the sand from an external source, in order to counteract the effects of erosion, not decrease erosion.

Beach nourishment suffers from a few great drawbacks- the cost of sand in order to replenish a certain stretch of open beach- for example, Florida’s Miami Beach, costed US $64 million in 1976. Adjusting for inflation, this same stretch of beach would cost $328,477,931.30 SGD. In total, 16 kilometers of beach was nourished. This means that less-developed nations would be unable to afford beach nourishment, as indicated in a UNEP report on coastal management in the African Continent. Just for the nourishment of the Cap Vert Peninsula, “beach nourishment, would cost US$255-US$845 million (0.7-2.2% of the country’s GDP) over a fifty year period.”. This means that in a worst case scenario of many major beaches being eroded at an increased rate due to rising sea levels, African countries would be unable to afford the ‘soft’ measure of beach nourishment in the long run.

Another great drawback of beach nourishment is the stopping of the sediment erosion forming a smooth pattern for waves, waves hit other non-nourished portions of the coast harder, causing severe erosion down the coast. This translates to an inability to nourish portions of the beach for fear of causing other downdrift sections from being eroded.

These combined detrimental effects, along with the impermanence of such a measure, makes beach nourishment only affordable by countries severely reliant on beaches and tourism, or otherwise richer countries.

However, this doesn’t mean that beach nourishment is completely inviable. Nations like the United States, Australia, and the Netherlands, with great quantities of beaches and wealth, can afford to replenish beaches with sand. Note that the sand being used to nourish the area must be equal or greater in particle size- this translates to a usually higher cost than the normal sand, as air is trapped under the sand and sold, leading to an abundance of air and not sand. Smaller sand, used by accident in replenishing Hawaiian beaches in Maui, reportedly “contained excess silt that enveloped coral heads, smothering the coral and killing small animals that lived in and around it.”.

The advantages of beach nourishment include- a preservation of the natural beauty of the area, which ‘hard’ measures like groynes cannot provide, an increase in area for settlement and tourism activities in order to increase income from such beaches. The land, finally, remains stable and is not changed by engineering, possibly increasing stable beach area size.

Hence, we may conclude, from examples like the Northern Gold Coast of Australia (75:1 cost:benefit ratio estimated), beach nourishment remains highly expensive, but retains key factors that other measures like groynes and seawall engineering (hard) cannot provide, such as increasing landmass and retaining beauty. However, due to it requiring more replenishment at rough 10 year intervals in most cases, it remains unaffordable or unprofitable for nations with low GDP or low percentage gain of GDP from tourism.