Posted on October 9, 2024
FOLLY BEACH, S.C. – Miles of the Folly Beach shoreline have been restored months after strong storms peeled back portions of the beachfront.
“If you were here in May, and you’re here today, you probably notice a big difference. If it’s your first time, you probably walk out and say, ‘Wow, that is a beautiful beach,’” Folly Beach Mayor Tim Goodwin says.
“On an undernourished beach, like the one we had months ago, water was going past the dunes, onto the streets for a normal high tide or king tide. For a renourished beach, you won’t see the same impacts,” Army Corps of Engineers Project Manager Wes Wilson says.
The renourishment also dredged the Folly River to reduce shoaling. It placed materials on the Bird Key sanctuary habitat. The project overall cost a total of $22 million to complete.
Projects like this one are typically done before peak hurricane season begins. It is believed to help preserve the shoreline and even out eroded areas. This project, which started in the Spring, was prompted by the effects of Hurricane Ian.
“We don’t get the replenishment of sand as it moves down the coast because the jetties stop them on the other side of the harbor. Every few years we have to renourish more often than a lot of other folks,” Goodwin says.
The Army Corps of Engineers and the City of Folly Beach recently updated their contract to ensure the continuation of renourishment and preservation efforts on Folly Beach for the next half-century.
“That 50-year partnership will create a new design template that is more dunes-centric. Again with berm, higher dunes, still a berm. The dunes provide that higher level of risk reduction so that’s a better template, a bigger bang for your buck,” Wilson says.
The new plan also adds in wood panel fencing, which is used to hold the sand in its place and act as a barrier.
Goodwin says the timing is perfect after a few recent “near misses” and some storm surges on their way in.
“It can disappear as fast as it comes, faster than it comes actually. With the right winds, waves, Nor’easters, hurricanes,” Goodwin says. “That empty feeling in the pit of your stomach, knowing you did that work, but if the storm doesn’t move further out, you did it for nothing.”
