Don’t waste money on beach sand, it will come back

I read the interesting article “Officials scramble for funding to replenish beaches” in the Oct. 15 Sun News. I hated the article. It made the assumption that the sand was lost and gone forever. This is incorrect.

I metal detect on the beach about 300 days a year. I know sand. Sand comes and goes. Sand determines whether I find some treasure. So yes, I have a vested interest in not wanting sand added to the beach.

Most people are unaware of how much sand can move in one tide cycle; sometimes it will add or subtract three or four feet of sand. Long ago, on a metal-detecting forum, one member stated that sand is a liquid. This description is right on target. Sand moves. Typically the sand is eroded in the winter and comes back in the summer. Storms also add and subtract sand. Yes, indeed. Tropical storms often add sand to the beach. It depends on how the waves attack the beach; do they come straight in (adding sand) or are the waves traveling down the beach (subtracting sand).

Now, what has happened since that Oct. l5 article? A huge amount of sand has come back onto the beach naturally. It happens all the time. How can I tell that? Every time I go out detecting I use landmarks to determine how and where the sand has moved. The storm drains give me a base point. How many feet in front of the storm drain is the sand today? At the piers I note the depth of the sand by how high the sand is on the pilings. At 14th Avenue Pier, is the concrete showing at the base of the pilings or how high is the sand on the braces?

If you want further proof, ask the guys who dig out the storm drains with the backhoes. Why are they digging out the storm drains? There is too much sand built up in front of them; they won’t drain. In fact, many of the storm drains are so buried that the only evidence they exist is the two posts that stick up above the sand.

Perhaps 30 years ago, I made my first visit to Myrtle Beach. I remember distinctly sitting on the coquina rock at the Hurl Rocks Park area. I haven’t seen the coquina rock in the last nine years. It is buried beneath the sand. There is a sign in the parking lot that states that in 1776, naturalist William Bartram traveled through this area, noting the “cliff of rocks” now known as Hurl Rocks. This is evidence that the natural condition of the beach in 1776 was to have the coquina showing.

Also, there is a shipwreck at 43rd Ave. North called the Freda A. Wylie, a three-mast schooner. Dwain Patrick, a local, said that what remains of the shipwreck was not visible “before” the first renourishment. It was buried beneath the sand. And since that time the beach has been renourished twice.

The last renourishment was prompted by Hurricane Ophelia in 2005. It took a huge amount of sand off the beach. Sometimes it takes a while for the sand to come back. Instead of letting it come back naturally, Myrtle Beach chose to renourish the beach.

As the renourishment was taking place in 2008, a tropical storm came up the coast. I was excited, thinking that the storm would erode the beach. On Sept. 8, tropical storm Hanna with 70 mph winds pummeled Myrtle Beach. As I walked out onto the beach I knew something was wrong.

I had to walk uphill through the dunes. The lifeguard boxes were half-buried in new sand. Hanna brought mountains of new sand onto the beach, naturally. Did the dredging company reimburse Myrtle Beach for all of the sand that they did not have to put on the beach? If the renourishment would not have taken place, Tropical Storm Hanna would have gone a long way to renourishing our beaches naturally.

There is no need to renourish at Myrtle Beach. The sand has already come back from the storm. And last fall, at low tide, it was possible to see people a long way off in the surf and they were only knee deep. There is a tremendous amount of sand just waiting for the right winds to push it onto the beach.

Sand is a liquid! It will come back naturally. It has done so for thousands of years. Perhaps we are too impatient, or perhaps somewhere, someone is making money with this decision to renourish. When we had the 17 inches of rain in November, a place in the sand dunes was eroded at Surfside Beach. Bulldozers came in and pushed sand from the lower beach and plugged the hole in the dunes. How many bulldozers could Myrtle Beach buy with this obscene amount of renourishment money?

This story was originally published February 1, 2016 at 9:22 AM with the headline "Don’t waste money on beach sand, it will come back."