There’s a good chance no more allegedly “muddy sand” from upland mines will be used in the upcoming Mid-reach beach replenishment project involving precious near-shore reefs.
The change in source for the sand represents a small victory for Save the Mid-reach protesters who also want to kill the project entirely. County officials are working to instead use sand dredged from the Canaveral Shoals offshore borrow area previously used without complaint to shore up beaches on Cocoa Beach and Indialantic.
The Satellite Beach City Council on March 20 unanimously approved use of sand staging areas near beach access points, a normally routine measure as they have for other smaller projects to fix storm damage. Starting in November, nearly 300,000 cubic yards of “beach quality” sand will be trucked to those staging areas in along the 7.8-mile Mid-reach shoreline. The overall amount needed is down from earlier estimates (around 600,000 cubic yards in 2005) because of the sand added for various storm repair projects, said Mike McGarry, program manager for the Beaches, Boating and Waterways section of the Brevard County Natural Resource Management Department.
The Mid-reach project is a much smaller scale than projects previously completed in Brevard in the North and South reaches. The goal is to place sand primarily on the upper beach in order to minimize the potential burial of the nearshore rock reef habitat, according to the county.
If dredged sand from the shoals is used for the Mid-reach, rather than from upland sand mines 30 to 50 miles south, it would be trucked from northern Brevard to a storage pile to be created near Spessard Holland Park in Melbourne Beach, and then trucked back to the Mid-reach as needed, McGarry said. The sand change may work out because of the economy of scale provided by combining the needs of the Mid-Reach and a similar project in the works for the South reach, McGarry said.
“It’s hard to get a dredge out there for a smaller project, but if we can combine it with another project, it makes it worthwhile. We know the sand is good because we’re used it so many times,’’ McGarry said.
Save the Mid-reach founder Matt Fleming said he was skeptical about the county plans after their “repeated assertions last year that the (upland mined) material was meeting quality standards and not harming turtle nesting.”
If the sand change occurs, and Save the Mid-reach had any role, Fleming said he doesn’t expect the group to get recognized for their efforts. “If we have, we won’t be hearing the City of Satellite Beach or the county thanking us for our efforts to protect the environment. Either way, it’s far from over. They have fought hard to keep dumping dirt and foreign sand on our ecologically important beach. We are going to continue in our ‘all of the above’ approach to protect Brevard’s Barrier Island Reef from these damaging nourishment projects,’’ he said.
Indian River County was the first to successfully obtain permits and environmental approvals to use sand processed from upland mines in large-scale beach replenishment. The effort was undertaken in 2009 to provide an economic boost for local sand miners and truck drivers who were out of work after the real estate market crashed in 2008. Sand mine owners heavily lobbied the Indian River County Commission and state legislators to push the Florida Department of Environmental Protection to consider upland sand.
The process of getting the mined sand to meet FDEP, Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers specifications took years. The first 6-mile upland sand project in northern Indian River County was fraught with trial and error, as well as equipment issues and weather delays, taking years to complete. Aesthetically, the sand was dark gray at first until it was bleached from the sun. But follow-up studies of sea turtle nesting rates showed the upland sand to be a successful substitute.
