A new study showing how Wrightsville’s 4-mile beach strand erodes will make future coastal storm damage reduction projects, also known as beach renourishment, more efficient by indicating where sand should and shouldn’t be piped.
Engineering firm Moffatt & Nichol’s second annual shoreline mapping study, presented Dec. 9 to New Hanover County’s Port, Waterway and Beach Commission, compiled erosion rates for 116, 736 feet of shoreline from Mason Inlet to Fort Fisher. In addition to showing the varying rates of erosion along that shoreline, the study proved regularly piping sand back onto the beaches mitigates long-term erosion.
Previously collected data showed Wrightsville Beach would lose a significant amount of sand yearly without renourishment. With renourishment, the beach’s yearly erosion rate is essentially zero.
The same holds true for Carolina Beach, Kure Beach and Fort Fisher. Without renourishment, the local shoreline would lose 650,000 cubic yards of sand a year but with renourishment, there is almost no overall erosion.
The county’s shore protection coordinator, Layton Bedsole, said that data helps justify spending $10 million to pipe sand onto the beaches every four years. Moffatt & Nichol engineer Robert Neal agreed, saying the yearly studies will be useful in the beach towns’ fight for continued renourishment funding from the federal government.
But it is also valuable, Bedsole said, to know where the sand is most needed, and therefore how to get the greatest amount of erosion protection using the least amount of sand.
The center of Wrightsville’s beach strand, approximately from the Blockade Runner Beach Resort to the Holiday Inn Resort, erodes much faster than the rest of the beach, so renourishment should be focused in that region, Bedsole said.
“The purpose of the shoreline mapping is to ensure we’re placing the right amount of sand in the right location,” he said. “No more, no less, because sand is a limited resource.”
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