Sand replenishment projects, like this one in East Hampton, are a mixed bag in terms of success. Photo: Sutton Lynch
Every surfer can point to a break they love that doesn’t receive as much sand flow as it used to. Damming rivers, cementing creek beds, paving cities, and beachfront structures all have disrupted the historic flow of sediment, which often negatively impacts beaches and surf spots.
In the town of East Hampton, New York, the fight against coastal erosion has reached new heights as they’ve started pumping offshore sand from the ocean floor onto the severely retreated beach. Videos emerged on social media of a vessel less than a mile from the shore sucking up sand and sending it through pipes to the coast.
The low-lying village on eastern Long Island has long been plagued by the problems of sand loss and coastal erosion, which prompted a new, multi-faceted project titled the Coastal Assessment and Resilience Plan. But the problems that East Hampton faces are anything but unique. Last week’s winter storms in California highlighted parallel issues as the dirt road to San Onofre was washed out and the parking lot at Cardiff Reef was claimed by the sea.
I was intrigued when I came across an Instagram post by Surfrider that announced its support for East Hampton’s erosion plan. I pondered: “Doesn’t transferring obscene amounts of sand from one location to another just create a new problem elsewhere?” So, to gain a better grasp of the situation, I called up Surfrider CEO Chad Nelsen to talk about Surfrider’s support for East Hampton’s project and the organization’s approach to coastal erosion as a whole. I learned that there is no perfect response and rarely is the solution black and white.
Take me through the process of what Surfrider considers when supporting a sand replenishment project like the one in East Hampton.
Sand replenishment is a mixed bag. You basically have three choices when you’re facing these coastal erosion issues: Armor, which is bad because it destroys the beach and causes all kinds of problems, beach replenishment, or you need to move back. It’s three tough choices and none of them are optimal.
The beach replenishment projects are a middle ground. The challenges are that they’re incredibly expensive, they tend not to last very long, and depending on the project, they can have all kinds of detrimental impacts. For example, if they don’t get the grain size distribution right for the sand it can kill the surf. But there are some cases where it’s made surf better, as you get more sand in the system and more sandbars. You see that in New Jersey. And in and other places, they’ve wiped out the surf entirely, like in Delaware and Maryland.
Can you elaborate on the pros and cons of sand replenishment?
Anytime they’re vacuuming up a habitat and moving it to another place, it’s likely going to have some impact. But if that sand is super transitory, just moving around like a sand dune underwater, it might have less impact.
And then when you put the sand on the beach, if the grain size is different, it can impact the nearshore ecosystems too. They tend to do these projects every five years because they disappear, so you can get these cumulative impacts.
There’s all these trade offs. We get beaches back, it can buffer from storms, it can provide sandbars for surfing – which are good. But it has these potentially negative impacts. And some of those can be managed by doing a good project, picking good sand, being careful about the grain size distribution, etc.
And then there’s the long term strategy. These projects are tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions, of dollars. Given the economic value of beaches, the costs/benefits usually weigh out. But it’s a matter of who pays and who’s benefiting. Are these publicly accessible beaches? Or are we just subsidizing wealthy front row homeowners? (Will they) continue to develop the coastline because they’ll always be pumping sand on the beach? I don’t think this is going to happen in eastern Long Island, but in other places, like in Florida, they’re actually building bigger high rises in front of eroding beaches, which isn’t a good idea. So you can create this false sense of security.
How does the decision making process work for Surfrider to come out and support a specific project like you did in East Hampton?
We tend to defer to the local chapters, like our Eastern Long Island chapter, to make decisions on local issues. They can work with our experts and staff that are experienced looking at these issues around the country or historically. If it gets beyond the local area, to the state, the region, or the country, then we coordinate up the chain at Surfrider.
We’re also advocating for long term managed retreat coastal adaptation projects, which is really not about what the next summer looks like, but what the next decade or two look like. In Montauk (east Long Island), in particular, it’s pretty obvious that the front row of hotels, where the geo bags are, are in harm’s way. They’re where the dune used to be. At some point, they’re probably going to have to think about whether or not those hotels are in the right spot, and how to move them, which is no easy task. They’re obviously important economic drivers of local tourism, so it’s a tough issue. But again, is it our job to pay for sand to be put in front of hotels so that those hotel owners can have a profitable business? It’s essentially a subsidy.
Sand replenishment systems are anything but simple. An aerial shot of the East Hampton site. Photo: Sutton Lynch
Sand replenishment is a hot topic almost everywhere. Do you think taking drastic measures, like what we are seeing in East Hampton, is going to be something that’s increasingly necessary?
Yeah, I think there’s going to be more desire to do it. But it’s going to be harder and harder to do due to the higher sea levels. That’s actually fighting against coastal erosion because it naturally wants to move the coasts inland. We’re fighting against nature, which usually is a losing battle over time. And it’s going to get more expensive. It’s getting increasingly difficult to find good sand.
Have there been any success stories of locations that have been able to find a sustainable problem to loss of sand?
Great question. In the past they’ve pointed out Miami as a successful place because the wave energy is so low. So the sand has tended to stay there. And it seems to be high quality. I think Virginia Beach is another place where they actually locally fund it with the hotel taxes. It’s been an ongoing project and it seems to have been successful there. It’s just a matter of degrees. New Jersey’s spent billions of dollars on beach replenishment over the decades. You can argue that it’s been pretty successful, although incredibly expensive.
What would be your blue sky solution to coastal erosion if you had full rein to fix the problem?
I think the realistic solution is to build these 50- to 75-year coastal adaptation plans, like what Montauk is doing. Come together as communities and regions, look at sea level rise in erosion scenarios, and come up with a plan. Some places maybe will armor and just lose the beaches. Some places will spend the money and pump sand on the beach forever and try to keep up with it. And in some places they will probably move back.
In a blue sky scenario we would try to restore sand flow where we can. The L.A. River is being restored. If they can do it in L.A., they can do it anywhere. It’s ironic that there are these debris basins up behind L.A. and other places, even behind Orange County, where they’re collecting all the sediment to stop it from flooding neighborhoods. That same sediment is what we need at the beaches. Some of that sand is what they’re using for San Clemente, which is good. They’re basically artificially transporting the sand that used to go down the rivers to the beach.
Coastal flooding near Santa Cruz in February of 2023. Photo: Santa Cruz County
I’m originally from Santa Cruz, and the erosion situation is such a mess up there. They’ve cemented cliffs that should naturally be eroding…
There’s a great geologist in California named David Revell. He was a PhD geologist and he’s a coastal consultant. He said, “Coastal erosion is a beautiful thing.” It’s what created all the places we love. Point breaks and river mouths are erosive features. If you think about Rincon, Malibu, Trestles, those are all cobble river mouths. Erosion is what created all of these places that we love to surf. But we just built too close.
And you know, sandy beaches are some of the most dynamic landscapes on Earth. They move around a lot, and we want them to be stable. And I think that’s ultimately the tension. If we create enough of a buffer, if we brought everything 300 yards back from the coast, we’d probably be in OK shape.
Looking more from a surfer’s perspective, what kind of factors do you have to take into account when you’re doing these sand replenishment projects to protect or create surf?
If you think about a sandy beach, generally, the coarser the sand, the steeper the beach. There’s a range of sizes and every beach has its own unique fingerprint. If you can match that, then it’s probably going to behave just like it did before you added the sand. If you don’t match it, it’s going to change. It’s like Goldilocks and the three bears – you want to get it just right.
And there are other controversies: Do you put in structures like jetties or groins to try to hold the sand? That’s what makes the good surf spots in some places, like in Southern California and New Jersey, but they also disrupt the sediment flow. We’re messing with a super dynamic system.
Does Surfrider typically deal with these erosion problems on a case by case basis? Or try to come up with more global policy that could prevent it?
We’re trying to advocate for coastal adaptation planning. We want sea level rise and climate change to be incorporated into how we think about zoning in the future, and rezoning. Last year, for example, we were able to pass a law in Washington state that required coastal adaptation to be considered in planning. We’re going to have to deal with this reactive nature of erosion problems, like at San Onofre and Montauk. But at the same time, we try to get ahead of it and plan for the future.
