Surprise! Local counties face unexpected beach erosion costs | Gil Smart

My wife's best friend is in town, and we were going to take her over to Bathtub Beach. It's such a little gem, the kind of place you take guests as a way of showing off where you live.

Only one problem: Bathtub Beach is closed.

Actually, right now Bathtub Beach really doesn't exist.

Martin County officials closed the iconic beach in November after high tides and rough surf washed away tons of sand, eroding the beach right up to the dune line. At the time, officials said it would remain closed until there was a walkable beach, and safe passage from the parking lot to the beach.

They guessed it might reopen sometime in December.

Now it will be May at the earliest.

More: St. Lucie County will impose new taxes to pay for beach repairs

More: Indian River beach restoration costs rise by $1.9 million

The county now has a beach restoration project out to bid, with responses due next week. Martin County Coastal Engineer Kathy Fitzpatrick said officials are hoping for "substantial completion" of the project by May 1.

She hesitated to estimate what it might cost, but noted a recent beach restoration project about half the size of the current need ran about $2.6 million.

So figure on $5 million, and that may be a conservative estimate.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency and the state Department of Environmental Protection could kick in some of the money, Fitzpatrick said. Additional funding will come via the county's agreement with the Sailfish Point neighborhood south of Bathtub Beach.

But depending on how magnanimous the feds and the state are feeling, the county itself — that is, taxpayers; you — may need to dig deep to fund this unexpected expense.

"We are always prepared to react when conditions necessitate," said Fitzpatrick, but "absent the hurricane impacts, we would not be doing this project this year."

It's a familiar refrain across the Treasure Coast, as local governments are facing beach renourishment costs they hadn't anticipated.

St. Lucie County will spent between $2 million and $2.5 million for an "emergency renourishment project" on Fort Pierce Beach, to begin in February or March.

Initially the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was slated to do — and pay for — the project, but the feds "did not step up with the funding," said Glenn Henderson, the county's director of Mosquito Control and Coastal Management Services.

"As a result, the county has to fill the void," he said.

This, in addition to the massive, 50-year renourishment effort likely to cost county taxpayers some $85 million between now and 2070 — with the first installment of more than $14 million due in 2010.

In Indian River County, a three-phase beach restoration project began in November and is expected to wrap by April 30. The project was originally expected to cost $4.8 million, most of it coming from county tourist tax revenue, plus $1.7 million from a state Department of Environmental Protection grant and $1 million from FEMA.

But in December the price tag went up by $1.9 million as officials discovered an additional 83,100 tons of sand was needed for the project. County officials said they'd ask FEMA to pay the additional cost.

Good luck with that.

So bottom line: Across our region, a minimum of $14 million will be spent on beach restoration in 2020, with a significant chunk of it money local county governments hadn't expected to spend.

And that's just one year. Next year's tab could be less. Or more.

Either way, it's difficult to see how counties can continue to absorb unexpected beach restoration costs. But what's the alternative?

At Bathtub Beach at least, "there are no great options for maintaining the kind of visitor access the county is interested in maintaining unless you're ready to spend $5 to $6 million every one to two years," said Dr. Rob Young, a professor of coastal geology and director of the Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines at Western Carolina University.

"The fact that sea level is rising tells us every coastal erosion and management problem we have is only going to get worse, not better."

Young — a fan of Bathtub Beach who has visited it numerous times — recently referred to it as "Dump Truck Beach" in a social media post.

"In 2018, they dumped over 200,000 cubic yards of sand on the beach at a cost of around $6 million," he wrote. "All that sand is already gone."

Won't be long, of course, until the waves wash away whatever gets dumped there this year.

"Let's be honest," said Young, "that parking lot (at Bathtub Beach) is not going to be there 20 years from now... what we should be doing is thinking outside the box, asking our coastal managers to give us the best and worst case scenarios for the next 20 years and ask if there's any way to retain access without keeping all that infrastructure.

"But you can't bury your head in the sand and pretend you can just keep pumping sand onto the beach," he said.

"It's not just Bathtub Beach — that's how we do it all over America."

Gil Smart is a TCPalm columnist and a member of the Editorial Board. His columns reflect his opinion. Readers may reach him at gil.smart@tcpalm.com, by phone at 772-223-4741 or via Twitter at @TCPalmGilSmart.