The project aims to put about 1.1 million cubic yards of sand on 11.5 miles of beach from the southern border of Patrick Space Force Base through Satellite Beach, Indian Harbour Beach, Indialantic and ending in Melbourne Beach at Spessard Holland Beach Park.
The so-called Mid and South Reach Shore Protection Project is 100% federally funded to restore damages from Hurricanes Ian and Nicole in 2022.
Dutra Dredging dredges the sand from Canaveral Shoals — an area about nine miles off of Cape Canaveral — and stockpiles it on the beach between Spessard Holland North and South parks. The sand then gets hauled by truck north on State Road A1A to be placed in the Mid-Reach area. They haul the sand by truck, instead of pumping it directly onto the the beach, to minimize burial of nearshore rock reef habitats.
Sandra Sullivan, an environmental activist from South Patrick Shores, has long taken issue with the volume of sand being increased on the project in recent years and the amount of nearshore coquina-rock reef that similar sand placements in the past buried, killing rare worms and other marine life that lives on the reef.
“Increasingly, you’re going to have less and less life,” Sullivan said of the nearshore reef getting buried by the sand project. “How many more times are you going to do it before it becomes lifeless?”
Part of the problem, said Randy Parkinson, coastal geologist at Florida International University, is that very few scientists study the impacts of beach renourishment on the rare Sabellariid worm reefs that span from roughly Cape Canaveral to Biscayne Bay. The worms settle onto the nearshore limestone and build protective tubes out of the surrounding sand. The reefs they form, often exposed at low tide, create tide pools that provide vital habitat for marine life.
“It is kind of difficult to find an expert that is looking at the interaction of these nearshore reefs with sediment, but beach renourishment in particular,” Parkinson said. “They’ve always been buried and re-exposed. There are so many other elements of pressure. The real question is ‘what’s the tolerance of this stuff to an environment that has changes.’ “
A landmark paper about the worms by Florida State University in 1968 found that they have been “instrumental in building and protecting beaches of the geological past and in exerting control over the evolution of shorelines.”
The worms are very resilient and their larvae can quickly reestablish on the coquina rocks, especially in fall and winter, said Dan McCarthy, a biologist at Jacksonville University who’s studied the worms’ reefs from Palm Beach to Brevard for years.
Over the long-term, however, he worries about the continual bombardment with sand that can kill the worms. “This is a species that’s adapted to a naturally harsh environment. They can be covered over for a couple days and still survive if they’re re-exposed,” McCarthy said. “After three days, they’ll die.”
The worms’ reproductive capability way outstrips the pace of coral-reef growth rates. “They’re like little brick layers,” McCarthy said. “It’s quite a beautiful organization, when you look at it up close.”
After a decade of studies and permitting, the federal government allowed the Mid-Reach dredging project, which offsets about three acres of the reef that the project buries with a $10.6 million, 4.8-acre man-made reef. But Sullivan and a few other local activists contend that the artificial reef falls ecologically short of making up for the buried natural reef.
Federal officials insist they are trying to protect as much of the reef as possible.
Under the Endangered Species Act, the USFW and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issue what’s called a “Section 7 biological opinion” on beach renourishment projects to ensure species and habitat protection, to minimize “takes” — the legal definition for when a protected species is killed, harmed or harassed.
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials said in response to questions from FLORIDA TODAY that their “standard procedures were followed in working with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to complete the biological opinion for the project. The federal agency added that it’s the Corps decision on whether or not another biological opinion would be needed.
“Ultimately, it is up to the action agency (in this case the U.S. Army Corps) to determine whether a re-initiation of consultation including a Biological Opinion would be required.”
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