Regional shorelines see little federal aid

WASHINGTON – Congress is expected to provide at least $100 million to pump sand onto thinning beaches around the country this year, but only a sliver of that money is likely to be used on shorelines in Maine and the rest of New England.

The good news for beach-goers in Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts is that the region’s shores are less prone to erosion than beaches in the mid-Atlantic states or Gulf Coast.

But the bad news, according to critics of federal beach programs, is that the region’s taxpayers are getting stuck with the bill for bad shore management elsewhere in the country.

“The benefits of these programs are very localized,” said Jeff Stein, a budget analyst at Taxpayers for Common Sense, a government watchdog group. “New England is blessed with better, more stable beaches than someplace like Florida, and the states up there haven’t had as ruinous a coastal policy as other states. So now they are subsidizing the mistakes of Florida and New Jersey.”

New England’s beaches experience less erosion because the region has fewer artificial jetties – piers or walls that are built out into the ocean, perpendicular to the shoreline – fewer hurricanes and a gentler slope of the continental shelf underneath the water.

Taxpayers for Common Sense charges that federal beach replenishment projects, usually managed by the Army Corps of Engineers, mostly benefit wealthy beachfront property owners. The organization calculates that 21 of the nation’s 75 wealthiest beach towns have received federal funds.

“The corps is currently pumping sand onto the beaches of 18 of America’s 200 richest towns listed in Worth magazine, including Gulf Stream, Fla., where the typical home sells for $1.5 million,” said Montgomery Fischer, policy director for water resources at the National Wildlife Federation.

“It could easily cost federal taxpayers more than $10 billion in the next several decades to continue to put sand on beaches that is literally washed away to sea.”

Some scientists agree that the sand-pumping amounts to at best a short-term solution to a continuing natural process.

“Artificial beach stabilization is an engineering approach to a naturally dynamic environmental feature,” said Andy Coburn, research associate at Duke University’s Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines. “You’re not restoring the beach in order to protect the beach, you’re renourishing a beach in order to protect the development behind it.”

But beach replenishment advocates say the program’s economic benefits extend far beyond the shoreline.

“The federal government collects $80 billion in direct federal tax revenues from money spent on beach tourism,” said Colin Bell, a lobbyist for the American Shore and Beach Preservation Association. “Compared to the return on that investment, we think that makes beach restoration pretty worthwhile. If you look at the total amount of federal dollars spent on beaches, it’s about as much as a rounding error on a federal highway project.”

Bell rejects the argument that the programs mostly benefit wealthy landowners, pointing out that every beach that receives federal aid must be open to the public.

In June, Tony MacDonald, executive director of the Coastal States Organization, a group representing governors of 29 coastal states, told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee that beach projects help protect communities by providing wider barriers to flooding, waves and storm surges.

He pointed to an Army Corps of Engineers study of six coastal communities in North Carolina that showed that communities with shore protection projects suffered significantly less from Hurricane Fran in 1996.

“Shore protection projects do not simply wash away into the sea,” MacDonald said. “They absorb wave energies that typically save millions of dollars in property damages. Although the sand is lost temporarily from the beach, many times the majority of the sand remains in the littoral system and is either returned to the beach or deposited on downstream beaches.”

Sen. Bob Smith, R-N.H., is playing a role in the debate over how much the federal government should contribute to beach replenishment projects. Federal dollars now cover 65 percent of project costs; beginning in 2003, new projects will get 50 percent. Smith wants to reduce the federal contribution to 35 percent.

“Shore protection projects, just like all corps water resource projects, must be fairly cost-shared by a nonfederal interest,” Smith said. “How can I look the people of New Hampshire in the eye and say, your tax dollars pay to maintain a waterway that sees two barges a year or to replenish the sand on a beach where the median price of a home is $1.5 million? Taxpayers’ hard-earned money should not be devoted to pouring sand on the beaches of the wealthy.”

But Smith’s proposal is expected to face tough opposition from senators from coastal states, such as Sen. Jon Corzine, a New Jersey Democrat, who contends that many beach communities aren’t wealthy and can’t afford to pay a larger share.

“Local governments simply can’t shoulder the cost-share flip, and I don’t think they should have to,” Corzine said.