Posted on May 23, 2026
By Jack Randall
When Steve Tarr hit golf balls from his Fort Pierce beachfront home, his 110-yard wedge shot would span the dune to the surf, he said. Eventually, he noticed his shots splashed down farther out to sea.
Either his golf swing was getting better, or the shoreline was getting closer.
“I’ve had pretty much the same golf stroke,” Tarr said.
The shoreline crept farther inland and took bigger bites from the sandy beach, which St. Lucie County officials have called the “most-eroded beach in Florida.”
Erosion formed an escarpment along the dunes. Children would often take turns sliding down and climbing back up, as dark sediment trickled down after them. Visitors marveled at and picnicked around the steep cliff-like formations.
Tarr, who owns downtown Pierce Public Market and his beachfront home for years, had a front row seat to the impending crisis.
Nick Olson, manager at Island Beach Bar and Restaurant, saw waves lapping up at the base of an eroded dune, several feet beneath the restaurant’s tiki bar.
“The earth falling into the ocean was concerning,” Olson said.
Fort Pierce’s beach was nearly flushed away, but a $15.1 million project that added 400,000 cubic yards of sand brought it back — for now, at least.
Fort Pierce and dozens of other Florida beaches — including those throughout the Treasure Coast — are increasingly dependent upon cyclic, multi-million-dollar replenishments of sand to avoid coastal degradation.
The city’s most recent renourishment — the most expensive in its history — is about 20% of the total cost of all renourishment projects combined that previously occurred in St. Lucie County, according to a TCPalm analysis of data from the American Shore & Beach Preservation Association, a lobbying group that supports federal renourishments.
On the Treasure Coast, renourishments have cost about $75.6 million in St. Lucie County, $40.5 million in Indian River County and $39.3 million in Martin County, according to TCPalm’s analysis of data that ends in 2025.
