Posted on May 14, 2018
By Erin MacPherson, CBS12
For months, Bathtub Reef Beach in Martin County was closed for a renourishment project after it lost a lot of sand.
So where did all that sand go? Some of it wound up in the St. Lucie Inlet.
Right now, workers are dredging the St. Lucie Inlet.
This project was set to start before Hurricane Irma, but Martin County spokesperson Martha Ann Cness said the workers couldn’t dredge because of the weather.
The Army Corps of Engineers estimated to dredge 400,000 cubic yards of sand last fall. However, now they plan to dredge about 500,000 cubic yards. Cneiss said that increase is due to storms and the hurricane.
The workers will start dredging the channel and then move inward. She explained the majority of the sand is not in the channel itself, but in the basin which keeps it from making the inlet too shallow.
The project will continue throughout the summer then that sand will be used for other beach and habitat nourishment
Source: CBS12
