A shot-across the bow, on the littoral subject of beach nourishment impact, has been fired John R. Gillis in the form of a NYT Op-ed piece entitled, Why Sand is Disappearing. In doing so this historian taps solidly into the tradition of Lionel A. Walford, quoting his colleagues, Rachel Carson and Dery Bennett, to show how views about the beach have evolved. “In every curving beach, in every grain of sand, there is a story of the earth, ” wrote Carson in 1958. “A beach is a place where sand stops to rest for a moment before resuming its journey to somewhere else,” wrote Bennett, who co-founded with Walford the American Littoral Society and who later established Cindy Zipfs Clean Ocean Action.. Gillis updates this with a more novel ecological paradigm: Sand moved along the shore and from beach to sea bottom and back again, forming shorelines and barrier islands that until recently were able to repair themselves on a regular basis, producing the illusion of permanence.... the world’s natural sand beaches are disappearing, due partly to rising sea levels and increased storm action, but also to massive erosion caused by the human development of shores. Many low-lying barrier islands are already submerged, notes Gillis. Then Gillis adds something that no New Jersey activist has dared highlight: Before next summer, endless lines of dump trucks will have filled in bare spots and restored dunes... dredged from coastal waters — a practice that disturbs the sea bottom, creating turbidity that kills coral beds and damages spawning grounds, which hurts inshore fisheries. ALSs Bennett, to be sure, was not blind to the littoral processes complicated by business around Sandy Hook, emphasizing back in 1986 the persistent problem of narrow minded stakeholders: Efforts to stop beaches from moving have long been called shore protection and are usually supported by calls to Save our Beach. Shore protection should more properly be called real estate protection, because in most cases you cant have houses on beaches or where beaches should be, Bennett wrote in the introduction to his book, Living with the New Jersey Shore. It is a pity that this subject is raised first by a historian (retired), and not by Cassandra Ornell or Cindy Zipf, who are raising money to save the ocean, but instead apparently just protecting the shore-homes. Let us remind you as Bennett has, that we need to learn to live WITH not ON. As Bennett finished: Enough Said. The NYT article can be found here: nytimes/2014/11/05/opinion/why-sand-is-disappearing.html?_r=0
Posted on: Fri, 07 Nov 2014 10:38:58 +0000
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