Add sand, lose sand, repeat. The climate conundrum for beaches.
Rebuilding beaches after hurricanes is costing U.S. taxpayers billions of dollars more than expected as the Army Corps of Engineers pumps mountains of sand onto storm-obliterated shorelines. Congress approved more than $770 million since 2018 for emergency beach “nourishment” projects after five megastorms struck Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas. Those costs shattered government expectations about the price of preventing beaches from disappearing through decades-old programs that in many cases were created before the dangerous effects of climate change were fully understood. Four of those storms — Michael, Maria, Irma and Ian — were among the most powerful to make landfall in the United States, raising questions about the rising costs of pumping, dumping and spreading sand onto beaches that are increasingly jeopardized by the effects of climbing temperatures.