Panama City Beach’s 3rd Renourishment Project

You might not know this… (and why would you?) But every so often all coastal beach communities go through beach renourishment projects to restore natural beauty to that all-important asset that keeps bringing people back year after year… the beach!

Look out, here’s the educational bit!

Sea oats actually trap sands, and over time (a really loooooonnng time) this causes sand dunes to appear. These don’t just make your vacation photos look pretty, but they perform a very important task: these anchor dunes protect the beaches (inland) against wind and waves during hurricanes and storms.

Coastal construction, like Condos in Panama City Beach destroy much of this important beach vegetation, and this means these important sand dunes cannot form. As a result, the beautiful (but now defenseless) beach gets washed away during hurricanes.

“Designing” the beach by shaping the sand

Oh No! What about the poor beaches? you ask.

Don’t worry… that’s where these beach renourishment projects come in.

According to Lisa Armbruster, a spokeswoman for Sustainable Beaches it’s a fairly simple process.

The sugar white sand you know and love from Panama City Beach will be dredged from offshore “borrow-areas”. The sand then gets pumped through large pipes, eventually making it to the beach.

But there’s a little more to it than that… when the sand arrives on shore, it’s still mixed with water, so it’s more like a sandy sludge. Bulldozers are then used to reshape the surface, and over time the sun bleaches the sand more and more to give it that sugar-white look.

Pretty cool huh?

Facts, Figures, and Turtles

So how much will the Panama City Beach renourishment project cost? Well, according to the Panama City Beach Convention and Visitors Bureau (woah, big name!) the construction cost for the project will reach $9.8 million. The project is entirely federally funded, and will take around 3 months to complete… but that’s around the clock work, 24 hours per day! In charge of the project, is the US Army Corps of Engineers. By the time this project takes place (Late 2011) sea turtle nesting season is over, and any nests on the beach will have hatched, and the happy little turtles will be having adventures in the gulf  🙂

Still want to learn more about Panama City Beach? Click here to read more… Panama City Beach Fl Information