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Shifting of sand may be island's erosion solution
By KATHY SAUNDERS TREASURE ISLAND -- If a major storm hits, city leaders don't want to wait to replenish the sand on their beaches. They are developing a plan to haul sand from their biggest beach in the center of the island to southern Sunset Beach where the shoreline is constantly eroding. The process is called sand sharing and hasn't been tried much. Treasure Island started discussing the possibility about five years ago when officials learned that a Miami-Dade County community was considering the idea. The city has been part of a $110,000 federally funded study of sand movement along the shore. University of South Florida students and consultants from a Sarasota-based coastal engineering firm have been tracking the erosion. This month, city commissioners are expected to endorse a sand sharing proposal to send to state environmental officials for approval. Jim Terry, the county's coastal management director, said Sunset Beach is scheduled for another renourishment in about 11 months when the Pass-a-Grille channel is dredged. Those projects require millions of dollars in funding and months of permitting. Sand sharing would be an interim solution until the larger projects could be secured. The cost would depend on how much sand is transferred from one beach to another. Cliff Truitt of Coastal Technologies said it would take a major event to trigger a sand sharing operation. Treasure Island would have to lose about half of the sand on its total shoreline or half the sand on a small portion of its most rapidly eroding beaches. Public Works director Don Hambidge said the city probably would use hydraulic pumps to move the sand from the wide beach to the narrow shoreline, controlling how fast the sand is removed and preserving the existing beach. The city's Beach Stewardship Committee last week embraced the idea. What the city needs from the state, Truitt told the committee, is "a conceptual permit for a conceptual project." That approval would be good for emergency sand replenishment for up to 10 years, he said. The Florida Department of Environmental Protection and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers have to sign off on that request. Rick McMillen, project manager for the Corps, said he isn't convinced Treasure Island's project will qualify for a Corps permit. "That whole island is our federal project, so it's something we're going to look at very closely," McMillen said. "The way they're looking at designing that thing and taking the sand out, we might have a problem with that. The way they're wanting to scrape it off the beach . . . they're talking about cutting huge chunks out of the beach. They haven't come and talked to us about what our thoughts are." City Commissioner Barbara Blush, a member of the Beach Stewardship Committee and the representative for Sunset Beach, said she supports anything the city can do to preserve its beaches and protect the shoreline. She recently attended the 15th Annual National Conference on Beach Preservation Technology in Biloxi, Miss., where Truitt presented the sand sharing idea. She said engineers were encouraging the state to adopt emergency beach management plans like the one Treasure Island is trying to develop. "We are so proactive -- I can't believe how proactive we are," Blush said.
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