Local beaches getting nearly $16 million for beach restoration

A nearly $16 million deal has been reached with the federal government that will pay to help restore local beaches.

An eight-mile stretch along Jacksonville Beach, Neptune Beach and Atlantic Beach, as well as Hanna Park is expected to see upgrades.

It comes after Hurricane Matthew in 2016 and Hurricane Irma in 2017 scarred our local beaches and dunes.

Eleven months after Irma, Jacksonville Beach is still a little worse for wear, with less shoreline and smaller dunes.

$15.7 million will be spent to restore the shore along Neptune Beach, Atlantic Beach and Jacksonville Beach and fix dunes around Hanna Park. The City of Jacksonville is chipping in $1.7 million.

“As projects go, this was really, really fast,” says Kevin Bodge, a marine engineering consultant. Bodge tracks beach restoration work for Jacksonville.

According to the Army Corps of Engineers about 850,000 cubic yards of sand will be collected offshore and moved through pipelines. To put that into context, one cubic yard is about 201 gallons, so the total amount of sand in this project will be 170 million gallons.

The work is scheduled to begin in October and the hope is to have it finished by December or the spring of 2019.

Cox Media Group