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Project will fluff up beaches
By LISA GREENE © St. Petersburg Times, published January 6, 2001 Heavy equipment will soon be rumbling up 9 miles of Pinellas County beaches to remove rocks put there during a 1998 beach renourishment project. "We should fluff that beach up nice and pretty for everybody," said Rick McMillen, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers manager for the Pinellas renourishment project. The change can't come too soon for beach officials who want their sand to roll, not rock. "Basically, it looks like the surface of Mars," said Tom Brobeil, city manager for Indian Rocks Beach. The city keeps removing rocks from the beach, Brobeil said, but more are uncovered after every storm. After requests from several local officials, the Corps plans to screen rocks out of the sand from North Redington Beach to Sand Key. The only beach that won't be screened is Belleair Shores, which didn't receive renourishment. The Corps estimates the project will cost about $2-million. The agency plans to start the project at the end of the month and work around the clock to finish by April, when turtle nesting season begins. McMillen said contractors won't interfere with Super Bowl activities. The rocks arrived on the beach mixed in with the 2.4-million cubic yards of sand the Corps pumped onto the beaches from a spot off Egmont Key. Tests at the location didn't show a layer of calcified shell under the sand, McMillen said. When the sand was first pumped onto the beach, residents were just glad to see it there, said Sand Key resident Dick Ruben, a board member of the Sand Key Civic Association. But soon they saw the rocks, ranging anywhere from an inch to a foot across, scattered across the sand. "We are not happy with the surface," Ruben said. "You can walk on it. But we had hoped for better quality." The Corps plans to hire a contractor to use a machine to sort sand from rocks through a screen with 3/4-inch holes. Workers will dig 3 feet deep, from the low tide line up to beach vegetation, dividing the job into sections 1,000 to 2,000 feet long. McMillen said the Corps hasn't decided whether to use equipment that sorts the sand as it travels up the beach, or to dig up the sand, move it to a stationary sorter on the beach, then replace it. A moving sorter would mean less equipment on the beach, McMillen said, but the agency doesn't yet know the cost difference. Brobeil said he's glad the work is being done. But many rocks have washed offshore, and those will still be there, waiting to wash in with the next storm, he said. The Corps will pay for 62 percent of the work, leaving 38 percent for the county. Jim Terry, coastal coordinator for Pinellas County, said the county will ask the state to pay for half of its share. County commissioners have not yet approved the expenditure. Other Florida beaches have had some rock problems, but this is the rockiest renourishment the Corps has dealt with in the state, McMillen said. But Terry said the county doesn't blame the Corps. "The Corps of Engineers used good engineering judgment," he said. Nobody "had any reason to suspect there was anything else out there." The Corps' tests included boring into the sand and bringing cores of sand to the surface. The layer of shells wasn't in those cores, Terry said. On Sand Key on Friday, the return of warm weather drew a few walkers and shell collectors out to the beach. Belleair Beach residents Kurt and Stephanie Schlageter were among them. Both said they'd like a smoother beach. "There are too many rocks in the water," Stephanie Schlageter said. "When you go swimming, it's torture." Still, she said, the government might have a better way to spend $2-million. But Kurt Schlageter said he's concerned about how tourists react to the sand as it exists today. "When the storms come in, it doesn't look as good," he said. "I think people might get a bad impression, just looking at the beach." If they do, they don't include the Roy family, who were visiting Sand Key from Toronto. Mike and Lydia Roy and their children, Samantha, Sean, and David, said they like the rocks. "The boys have been gathering them up," Mike Roy said. "We kept the nicest ones to bring back with us."
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From the Times North Pinellas desks |
