Coastal Services Center

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Historical Expenditures for Beach Nourishment Projects: Geographical Distribution of Projects and Sources of Funding (see note)

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Introduction

The shoreline of the United States stretches for 95,000 miles, including Alaska, Hawaii, and the Great Lakes. To maintain wide beaches necessary for storm protection and recreation, additional sand is regularly added to a number of these beaches (beach nourishment).

A comprehensive listing of substantial, designed beach nourishment projects was compiled to assess the present state of beach nourishment along the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts. This database is the first to require that a nourishment project be a fully engineered project of sufficient size to affect the coastal processes in the area. This listing differs from previously produced lists because it excludes small projects that are often included in larger databases such as dune enhancement or emergency berm development that are often constructed following hurricanes. Projects constructed for post-hurricane/storm protection and small-scale truck haul projects or projects with an average placement in the range of 5 cy/ft to 35 cy/ft are not included. Unlike other listings, this database provides a full summary of both federally and non-federally sponsored projects including state, county, local, and privately funded projects. These qualifications provide for a refinement of the database to a more manageable size, with the goal of including projects that are specifically of interest to the coastal decision-maker due to size and complexity of funding sources and methods.

This database includes engineering design quantities and parameters, as well as economic quantities associated with the projects. Professional coastal engineers have compiled this database from reports and through communication with beach nourishment professionals. The database has been reviewed by federal, state, and local officials, and in many cases by the entity directly responsible for the construction and oversight of the project. It is beneficial to coastal decision-makers to understand the location, scale, and economics associated with beach nourishment projects so they may understand the spending on beach nourishment within the United States and the division of this spending into federally and locally funded projects.

For ease of presentation, the beach nourishment projects presented have been divided by state, ranging from Maine to Texas. Figure 1 shows the coastal states represented in the beach nourishment database (Figure 2). Figure 3 is a graph of the total historical expenditures for beach nourishment projects within the 15 coastal states identified. The source for the data represented in Figure 3 is the database of beach nourishment expenditures. The beach nourishment database is described in detail later in this text.

Historical Statistics and Project Magnitude

The development of beaches for recreational purposes began early in the 19th century with the construction of piers and boardwalks along the New Jersey shoreline. The creation of a structured shoreline began along the Gulf Coast in Galveston, Texas, with the construction of the Galveston seawall and revetment designed to protect the city of Galveston from storms and flooding after the catastrophic impact of the 1900 hurricane. The first designed beach nourishment project was constructed in 1922 at Coney Island, New York, followed by the nourishments of Jones Beach, New York, in 1929 and Orchard Beach, New York, in 1936 (ASCE 1996).

Currently, all 15 coastal states along the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts have beach nourishment projects that include the placement of a significant quantity of sand-sized material along the coastline for the purpose of recreational enhancement and/or storm protection. Within those states, a total of 333 designed and engineered projects have been built over the past 80 years (1922 to 2002). These projects are included in the NOAA database described herein (note: nourishment projects with unknown placement volumes have been eliminated from the database). Of these 333 projects, the quantity of material placed along the shorelines of the United States has been identified as 517 million cubic yards (MCY). Of the Atlantic and Gulf coast states, Florida has constructed the greatest number of beach nourishment projects, with a total of over 140 designed and engineered projects over the state's 825 miles of sandy shoreline. New Jersey follows with 49 projects over the state's 127 miles of shoreline.

The details of each project are presented in Figure 2; the database includes parameters such as length; quantity of material placed (representing both pre-construction estimates and post-construction pay volume depending upon the information available); renourishment interval; the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers district in which the project is located; the engineering and permitting entities (the firms who designed the project and/or were responsible for the permitting of the project); project sponsors; project construction cost; federal, state, and local shares of the project cost; and the year of project completion. The database incorporates much of the information sought by coastal decision-makers. It is possible, using this database as a tool, to determine beach nourishment expenditures along the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts and compare state expenditures against one another, and additionally to compare expenditures by time period, which is discussed in more detail in the "Beach Nourishment Funding" section of this paper. Additionally, detailed information on specific projects is presented within the database. A review by the coastal decision-maker of the site-specific data may provide a local perspective on the size of projects constructed in the coastal counties and the costs associated with these projects.

Figure 3 graphically presents the total cost data contained within the database, in a plot of total beach nourishment expenditures by state. The results of Figure 3 are discussed in the "Beach Nourishment Funding" section of this text. Figures 4 through 33 present project expenditures by state along with a graphic of the associated state. The source of the data presented on each of the graphs is the beach nourishment database.

Massachusetts - Counties, Expenditures
Connecticut - Counties, Expenditures
New York - Counties, Expenditures
New Jersey - Counties, Expenditures
Delaware - Counties, Expenditures
Maryland - Counties, Expenditures
Virginia - Counties, Expenditures
North Carolina - Counties, Expenditures
South Carolina - Counties, Expenditures
Georgia - Counties, Expenditures
Florida - Counties, Expenditures
Alabama - Counties, Expenditures
Mississippi - Counties, Expenditures
Louisiana - Counties, Expenditures
Texas - Counties, Expenditures

Beach Nourishment Funding

Beach nourishment projects are federally, state, locally, or privately funded and often are funded by a combination of sources. Federal funding for beach nourishment has increased from $79 million in 1995 to $135 million in 2002. The states receiving federal funding within the regions designated previously include Delaware, Florida, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, and Virginia (Marlowe & Company 2001, 2002). The beach nourishment appropriations from 1995 to 2002 totaled $787 million. From 1995 to 2002, New Jersey has had the greatest level of federal appropriations for beach nourishment projects, with $168 million allocated (Marlowe & Company 2001).

Information on project costs was available for 242 of the 333 projects in the database. These costs were converted to current (2002) price levels using the ENR Construction Index. Almost no information on project costs was available for projects built before 1950. About $2.5 billion (current dollars) was spent on these beach nourishment projects. The breakdown by decade is as follows:

1950 to 1959	$39.8 million
1960 to 1969	$95.6 million
1970 to 1979	$516.0 million
1980 to 1989	$514.6 million
1990 to 1999	$835.6 million
2000 to 2002	$413.2 million

These costs include administrative costs associated during the construction of the project, but exclude most costs associated with project planning, engineering, and design.

Spending on beach nourishment has grown since the 1920s with only two projects represented in the database for the entire decade from 1920 through 1929. In contrast, from 1992 to 2002 a total of 131 beach nourishment projects are represented in the database.

Conclusions, Information Gaps, and Future Needs

This beach nourishment database provides a firm groundwork for the analysis of engineered and designed beach nourishment projects along the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico coastlines of the United States. The data contained within the database and the associated graphs provide the coastal decision-maker not only with an engineering record of historical projects, but also with an understanding of historical expenditures of beach nourishment projects and, in some cases, the associated cost allocations.

While the database contains much information useful to the coastal decision-maker, further data on historical cost sharing would increase the benefits of this database to federal, state, and local governments. Project related benefits computations are often non-existent for non-federal projects. Economic analysis for these projects would greatly improve understanding of the total estimated project benefits and the local, state, and regional economic impacts generated because of beach nourishment. An extension of the database should include more detailed post-construction data on the PED and construction cost distribution of projects, in addition to engineering and economic data.

References

ASCE. 1996. History and Heritage of Coastal Engineering. American Society of Civil Engineers. New York, NY. p. 602.

Marlowe and Company. 2001 and 2002. PowerPoint presentations - web site: http://www.netlobby.com.

Personal communication with state and federal agencies within coastal counties. 2002.

Trembanis, A. C., O. H. Pilkey, and H. R. Valverde. 1999. "Comparison of Beach Nourishment Along the U.S. Atlantic, Great Lakes, Gulf of Mexico, and New England Shorelines." Coastal Management. Volume 27, Number 4.

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. 1971. National Shoreline Study.

Note

This article is based on a new compiliation of data prepared by Parsons Corporation and Applied Technology and Management. These data have not yet been reviewed by Duke University or the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers, who have developed similar databases. It should also be noted, however, that some of the information in this database was drawn from the database developed by Duke University.