Posted on February 26, 2025
Tigertail Beach and outlying Sand Dollar Island on Marco Island have been renourished after damage from storms in 2024.
Naples-based coastal engineering firm Humiston & Moore implemented what will be an ongoing plan to protect the natural elements, the water quality and the homes and condos behind them, reusing sand pushed by the storms instead of importing it. This north part of Marco Island has been retreating over the past few decades at a rate of 40 to 50 feet a year, said Humiston & Moore Vice President Mohamed Dabees, who presented results of the project at the Marco Island City Council meeting Tuesday night.
About 200,000 yards of sand was used for the renourishment.
“That project is a ground-breaking project, because it set a very good precedent of working with nature in the sense that it’s not a typical project where we’re building hard structures. It’s a project that uses land force to make energy dissipation from storms,” Dabees said at the Feb. 18 meeting.
“(Hurricane) Irma started the collapse of that system,” he said. That’s when Marco and Dabees started to create this ongoing plan for using Sand Dollar Island, considered a spit, the lagoon and the surrounding mangroves to create a protective barrier. Each protecting the other. The spit that serves as a berm, the sand, the float (or marked) channel, the lagoon and the mangroves serve to absorb the energy caused by storms. All of which help protect the buildings and the rest of the island behind them.
Reusing the sand
“The other thing that is very important in that plan is that we’re not importing sand. We’re repurposing the sand from our system,” Dabees said. “The main reason we designed the float channel in the back of the bird, when the storm comes, it would push the sand it would fall into, and we can recollect it and repurpose it and reuse it. So, with the sand trap at the top of the island, and the repurposing the sand, we can reuse the same resource, whether it’s built post storm or every cycle for maintenance.”
The cost to bring in imported sand range between $50 to $100 per yard. The cost incurred to repurpose sand collected in the float channel was about 10% of that, Dabees said.
Boaters and visitors to Tigertail and Hideaway beaches last weekend may have noticed large mounds of sand on Sand Dollar Island. That sand has since been smoothed out, all at once so the Gulf doesn’t drag it away, Dabees told Naples Daily News.
Marco Island will request reimbursement of $575,073 from the Collier County Tourist Development Council. City Council approved the request Tuesday.
Renourishment plan includes future storms
The plan, Dabees said, includes the initial recovery project, re-establishing the flow channels that connect the north and south part of the lagoon that had been closed off by previous storms; re-establish the protective berm and beach; and extend the effort to revive the damaged living shoreline that has mangroves and buttonwood and other coastal vegetation.
Through an agreement with Marco Island, Humiston & Moore’s plan will allow the company to take action post disaster, Dabees said. That will let the company have contractors at the ready to move quickly.
“Now, with an effort that lasted roughly two months, we have reconstructed a considerable protective berm that is high enough that would be separating the energy from the Gulf, from the lagoon, and allowing the system to maintain its value as an environmental resource, as well as the protective value,” Dabees said.
