Manatee County natural resources director Charlie Hunsicker attended a beach renourishment conference in Jacksonville recently and learned there is little state and federal money available for the planned 2014 “central beach renourishment project” on Anna Maria Island.
“It’s looking pretty grim for funds,” Hunsicker said from the conference, which included local, state and federal officials from southeastern states concerned with beach renourishment projects.
The 2014 central beach renourishment project is scheduled to include 4.6 miles of various beaches in all three Island cities for an estimated $28 million.
For the 2002 Island wide beach renourishment project, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers provided about 60 percent of the funds through federal sources, while 30 percent came from the state and 10 percent from Manatee County.
Hunsicker said that following his return from the conference, he would discuss options with county and Island officials and begin a search for alternative funding sources.
The county’s bed tax, which provides a majority of the tax collected to Island beach renourishment projects, would pay for about 10 percent of the 2014 project cost. Port Dolphin LLC, builders of a natural gas pipeline from the Gulf of Mexico to Port Manatee, have pledged $5.5 million for beach renourishment.
Hunsicker said the news does not affect the renourishment project scheduled to begin March 1 on the Island. That $6.9 million project includes renourishment of Coquina Beach, a .6 mile portion of Anna Maria beach, and a few locations at the northern end of the Island.
The contract for the March 1 project was awarded to Great Lakes Dock and Dredge, Hunsicker said. The same company performed the 2002 beach renourishment project.
Completion of the project should be in early April, before the start of the turtle-nesting season, he said.
Renourishment of Island beaches is critically important to the area because Island beaches are the “driving economic force” in Manatee County, Hunsicker said at a recent Anna Maria commission meeting.
“What’s Anna Maria Island without its beaches?” he told commissioners.
County Commissioner Carol Whitmore, a former Holmes Beach mayor and current Island resident, was stunned by the news.
“It’s not a new project, it’s a maintenance project,” she said.
“I could understand the lack of funds if it were a newly proposed effort, but this has been around since 1992.”
Once she gets all the information from Hunsicker, Whitmore said she’s positive she and other county commissioners can find the necessary funds.
“We’ve got to do it. I don’t know how right now, but we’ll figure a way. The beaches are too important to this economy and the Island to ignore,” she said.
I think it’s a good thing that the beaches wont be renourished. I am a fourth generation Anna Maria Islander, and I have seen the beaches renourished before…. it’s not good. For one we as taxpayers pay millions to finance a project that will only be swept away by the tides and erosion in a few years. Secondly, the part that does stay put are the dry sand area, except the unrefined sand they pump in from offshore is like cat litter..(Used). It’s full of shells that are just small and broken enough to be sharp underfoot, and since it comes from in and near the clay layer offshore …it reeks for the first 6 months. Top all this off with the fact that you are essentially killing the Benthic (floor dwelling and sub floor dwelling) habitat for millions of species in the process. Think about all the Clams, Coquina, Sand fleas, burrowing fish, etc.. that all make their living on the near shore ocean bottom. They all get buried alive in the act of renourishment and as a consequence, all the near shore birds and fish that follow them in the food chain, are greatly reduced in number. It’s a waste of money and a bad decision. I for one am glad it won’t happen.
As someone who has come to AMI since 1999, I think that the beaches are far from being beautiful. It has become increasingly more difficult to walk the beach, because of the lack of sand, since the 2002 renourishment was ravaged by storms. If there isn’t a low tide during the day, good luck on a smooth walk.
If the powers that be want our island to be an attraction to tourists, they will find the money to bring the beaches back to where they should be.