Monday, Aug. 13, 1979
Costly Facelift for an Old Resort
Miami Beach attempts to turn back the tides
It is an incongruous sight. Two miles offshore from the hotel-lined beachfront, two giant dredges toil away round the clock, scooping up tons of sand from the ocean bottom. Heavy, 27-in. pipes carry the grayish slurry to the beach. There it is deposited in large, neat mounds, until the fresh sand is spread out by large earth-moving machines. Under way for two years, the controversial $64 million project by the Army Corps of Engineers is aimed at nothing less than saving one of the nation's vacation landmarks: that fabled stretch of the Florida Gold Coast known as Miami Beach.
The resort needs a helping hand. It has lost many vacationers to the Caribbean islands and to attractions like Walt Disney World in central Florida. Many of the old hotels are barely surviving; many shops have shut their doors. Where young people once cha-chaed through the night, now the elderly struggle to survive on their Social Security checks.
Perhaps the biggest factor in the resort's decline is man's intervention with nature. One of the many barrier islands off the U.S.'s Atlantic and Gulf coasts, Miami Beach is vulnerable to waves, winds and the natural ebb and flow of its fragile sands. During the first great Florida land boom in the early 1920s and the second boom of the 1950s, the beach's problems were compounded by unrestrained growth. Developers put up mansions, hotels and condominiums almost at the water's edge, atop the dunes that protect the island from the lash of the sea. After a devastating hurricane in 1926, many property owners erected groins, jetty-like projections, some of them stretching 150 ft. into the water. They had two purposes: to provide privacy and to prevent sand from being washed away from one place to another along the shoreline by sideswiping waves. The hotels also put up concrete sea walls to protect the buildings. But when waves bounce sharply off the walls, still more sand is carried off.
The groins were also ultimately destructive. Though each protected its own stretch of beach, the barricade hastened erosion on the adjacent section, which was no longer replenished by the wash of fresh sand. The only solution seemed to be to build more groins, but they caused more erosion. By the early 1960s, the waves were lapping almost at the foundations of Miami Beach monuments like the Fontainebleau Hilton.
By now, many experts believe, any attempt to contain erosion is futile. After spending millions of dollars on trying to save beaches along Cape Hatteras and elsewhere, the National Park Service decided that in most cases it was better to leave nature alone. But Miami Beach's leaders felt that the survival of the resort was at stake. With the support of the Florida congressional delegation, the Corps of Engineers began what is the largest beach restoration ever attempted. When the corps completes the project in 1981, it will have laid down 10.5 miles of new beach (1.2 miles in neighboring communities), with an average width of 250 ft. In addition, the new shoreline will be rimmed by a protective sand dune--a long, flat ridge some 20 ft. wide and 2 1/2 ft. high that will act as a storm barrier--and a park with hundreds of palm trees and paths for strollers and cyclists.
Boosters are convinced that the restoration will not only help lure the tourists back to Miami Beach but survive most of nature's attacks. Says Andy Hobbs, the corps's chief coastal engineer in Florida: "Without a major storm, the beach should last indefinitely." But many scientists are not so sure. Marine Geologist Harold Wanless of the University of Miami thinks that the fine sand used to rebuild the shore may not be durable enough to withstand natural erosion.
Adds Charles Lee of the Florida Audubon Society: "None of these projects has ever been permanent. All they do is buy a few years at an exorbitant cost."
The Coast Alliance, a coalition of environmental and other groups that has been advocating 1980 as the Year of the Coast, argues that in the future, prevention may be better than even a well-managed cure. A better course, it says, is to avoid such problems by placing limits on the construction of hotels and other structures too near precious beaches. That may well be the most important lesson from Miami Beach's costly facelift.
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