Posted on July 26, 2018
Tybee Mayor Jason Buelterman and city manager Shawn Gillen have wrapped up meetings in Washington, D.C. to make sure beach renourishment plans remain on track.
The city’s agreement with the Army Corps of Engineers, when it comes to beach re-nourishment, dates back to 1974, according to Gillen. He says that was before building and maintaining a wall of sand dunes was part of the plan.
Now the city hopes to work with the Corps to try to fill those when the next installment of renourishment work gets underway.
“Our hope is, through the Corps of Engineers is, and I know they’re willing to work to make a change, is to use sand through that re-nourishment process to place into the dunes,” Gillen said. “This is something that’s new. Our federal arrangement is so old, from 1974, that dunes weren’t part of the project back then, but they do understand how important they are.”
Preserving the sandy shore is expensive. Gillen says it could cost between $10 million and $15 million.
“A lot of that cost is the mobilization of a dredging machine out there and the miles of pipe that get sent from the ship, underneath the water and onto the beach and worked it’s way northward,” said Gillen. “That is quite a process and that machinery is extraordinarily expensive.”
Part of the plan is to get the dredging equipment to save money on the cost of sand when they begin to build more dunes.
Dredged sand will cost between $7 and $10 per cubic yard.
That price jumps to $30 or $40 per cubic yard if it is trucked, in according to Gillen. He says filling the gaps in the dune wall on Tybee could take up to 500,000 cubic yards of sand.
There is another important environmental impact on Tybee’s beaches and Gillen says it’s generated by the shipping channel off Tybee’s coast. It’s the focus of the Phase II Channel Impact Study.
“The channel alone being there alters the migration of sand, which alters the shape of the island and also the waves created by the larger and larger ships that are coming through there,” Gillen said.
The beach renourishment work on Tybee Island is scheduled to begin in the winter of 2019.
Gillen and Buelterman met with members and representatives of their Congressional delegation, as well as leaders with the Army Corps of Engineers at their headquarters in the nation’s capital.
Source: WSAV3
