Line in the sand over beach rebuilding

At the end of the long, hot Memorial Day highway there is, blessedly, a beach. A wide, breezy beach with plenty of room for the kids to play, and plenty of space between the oceanfront houses and the waves.

That's what the crowds heading to the nation's beaches this weekend want. And that's what they've got, thanks to 30 years and an estimated $3.5 billion of public money spent pumping sand onto beaches to replace what nature has taken away.

Winter storms, currents from inlets and a slow rise in sea level cause beaches to erode. The wide sand of last Labor Day can disappear after a fierce Nor'easter or a pounding from El Nino. Coastal states and towns say the process of replacing sand - beach replenishment - is vital to keep tourists coming, to protect coastal property from storms and to keep their economies healthy.

But environmentalists hate beach replenishment. They say it doesn't last, it's environmentally questionable, and it's bad fiscal policy. Their argument is winning converts: The federal government, which pays for the majority of beach replenishment through the Army Corps of Engineers, wants to stop picking up so much of the tab. And in states battling shoreline erosion, some are questioning whether it is worth trying to hold back the tide.

"You'll always have the beach. It just may not be where you want it," says Jim Gibeaut, a coastal geologist with the University of Texas' bureau of economic geology.

Why beach erosion happens

Beach erosion is inevitable. Many beaches - from Fire Island, N.Y., to the North Carolina Banks to Padre Island, Texas - are on barrier islands, long narrow sand islands just off the mainland. In their natural state, barrier islands constantly, imperceptibly shift: as they are pounded by waves from the ocean, they roll over on themselves, moving closer to the mainland. The oceanside beach retreats but doesn't disappear.

"A barrier island's profile is preserved by allowing it to give with bad storms, to roll with the punch," says Dery Bennett, president of the American Littoral Society, a coastal-environment advocacy group.

The real villain in erosion is development, environmentalists say. Beach houses, hotels and roads interfere with the islands' movements. Beach sand trying to move in from the ocean gets jammed up against man-made structures and has nowhere to go but out to sea. As a result, replenished beaches erode again. The solution, environmentalists say, is to move buildings back from the oceanfront. That would be a huge and expensive undertaking.

Opponents of beach replenishment also argue that generous federal subsidies - the federal government usually pays 65% of the cost of replenishment - simply make people across the country pay to protect coastal residents' beachfront properties.

"The problem is that we try to draw a line in the sand and challenge the sea not to cross it," says David Conrad of the National Wildlife Federation.

Building seawalls to protect beachfront property, and building groins and jetties to try to hold beaches in place, is even worse than beach replenishment, environmentalists say. Seawalls hasten beach erosion by giving the sand nowhere to go but straight out to sea. Groins and jetties interfere with water currents that carry sand from beach to beach - giving one beach sand while starving the next beach over. Natural inlets, which tend to shift in position, and man-made channels, which alter water currents, contribute to erosion.

"There are many, many causes (for erosion) but I think man is the biggest problem," says Orrin Pilkey, director of Duke University's Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines, and a leading opponent of beach replenishment.

Federal money and beaches

Since 1965, an estimated $3.5 billion has been spent on

1,305 beach replacements, according to a study by Duke's developed-shoreline program. The Army Corps of Engineers cites much lower numbers, but says it is currently spending $150 million a year on beach replacement.

The beach economy, which begins its annual boom this weekend, depends on the federal spending. No sandy beach, no tourists, no money for all the resort owners, rental property landlords, restaurateurs, hotel operators, and ferris-wheel

ticket-takers who depend on them. And no tax revenue for the cities and states along the coasts.

"It's a matter of economic survival," says Stan Tait, president of the Florida Shore and Beach Preservation Association, where nearly 23 million tourists a year visit beaches and spend $9.7 billion.

But increasingly, governments no longer want to spend money re-engineering the beach. The Clinton administration has proposed cutting Army Corps of Engineers funding in the Water Resources Development Act, a biennial bill now before Congress that funds beach replenishment, harbor dredging and other public works projects.

Under the administration's proposal, the Corps would still pay for 65% of the initial cost of new beach replenishment projects.

But it would cut to 35% the federal share of the following 50 years of maintenance, including storm rehabilitation and further sand pumping every few years, that beach replacement projects require.

A change of thinking about beach erosion also is occurring on local levels. In the difficult decision on property vs. nature, a few states are leaning toward nature.

Tough local decisions

Shell Island, a nine-story, 12-year-old condominium in Wrightsville Beach, N.C., is about to fall into the sea - and North Carolina isn't going to stop it. North Carolina, South Carolina, Maine, Rhode Island, Texas and Oregon ban seawalls and other hard structures on beaches. The state Coastal Resources Commission has denied permission to the building's owner to install a permanent seawall, and requires that a temporary seawall come down next year. The case is in court.

In Oceanside, Ore., El-Nino-strengthened winter storms ate away bluffs until the cliff edge was 5 feet from a luxury townhouse development called The Capes. Evergreen trees fell downhill from backyards. Twenty homes were judged too dangerous to occupy. In February, despite pleas from homeowners, Gov. John Kitzhaber refused to allow a rock wall to be built on the beach to stop erosion of the sandy 170-foot bluff.

In Washington state, which does not have a seawall ban, the focus of controversy is a condo development built on a 25-foot dune in Ocean Shores. For three years, the dune has been eroding. A consultant hired by the state to study the problem says the best solution is simply to pick up the development and move it 500 feet inland.

"The solution that makes the most sense is to not fight the Pacific Ocean," says Harry Hosey of Pacific Engineering International in Edmonds, Wash.

In New York, the Army Corps of Engineers wants to start a 15-mile beach replenishment project on Fire Island, a Long Island summer resort. But the Department of the Interior has objected, saying beach replenishment could damage habitat for the endangered piping plover and interfere with the beach's natural recovery. The Interior Department could halt the project because part of the beach is a national seashore.

On the shores of Lake Michigan, in Ogden Dunes, Ind., the only thing that's keeping Buzz Lee's house from sliding into the lake - his back yard is already gone - is a 23-foot steel wall that he spent $20,000 to build last year. Residents here complained in a federal lawsuit that the nearby Port of Indiana Harbor, carved out of the lakeshore 30 years ago, has stopped the huge volumes of sand that would have naturally drifted along the shoreline to feed their beaches.

Rep. Peter Visclosky, D-Ind., has proposed an Army Corps of Engineers study to find the best way to make repairs. In exchange, residents must agree to allow public access to their beach. "The study will take 10 years," says resident Don Crizer. "By the time they finish, these houses might not even be here."

If federal budget cuts go through, shore communities and coastal states will be faced with tough decisions on whether they can or want to pay more of the bill for beach replenishment.

But that will make for more honest debate on its desirability, says Stephen Leatherman, director of the Laboratory for Coastal Research at Florida International University in Miami. Heavy federal funding makes coastal towns "almost like a dope addict. As long as you can keep getting your fixes and its free, why would you stop? . . . We're not getting an honest cost-benefit analysis right now."

By Martha T. Moore, USA TODAY

Contributing: Debbie Howlett, Martin Kasindorf, Patrick O'Driscoll, Deborah Sharp

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