July 10, 2008 Issue

Mistakes are made at all levels of society. On a grand scale the Iraq War was, and is, a mistake. Closer to home—and on a different scale—our beach management in Destin has been a mistake.

In Destin—as in many other coastal areas—it was a mistake to allow massive development along the beautiful beaches of the Gulf of Mexico. Other parts of Florida—the Miami area, for instance—did things differently. There, development was only allowed landward of Highway A-1-A. Their beaches suffer far less erosion than those on the northern coast, and they remain open to the public, as they should be everywhere.

Over 100 years ago, the founders of the small utopian community of Fairhope, Alabama maintained that the one mile of waterfront there was “too valuable” to be owned by individuals and it was deemed to belong to the community.

During the Destin land grab of the 1970s, our community did not take that approach. We didn’t just allow beachfront development, we encouraged it. And we still do.

Even the bastion of “new urbanism” couldn’t resist the short-term economics of selling and building on their thin strip of beach. Now Seaside, perched atop some of the highest dunes on the gulf coast, is as endangered as any of our less-trendy developments. “The new town, the old ways” is Seaside’s slogan. We now know that nothing about Seaside resembles a real town. It is a colorful tourist trap, albeit an expensive one. Robert Davis, the developer of Seaside, was as poorly prepared to protect Seaside’s beaches as any lesser known, less-hip developer in Destin.

What Seaside and other developments are discovering is what the illustrious Army Corps of Engineers should have learned by now. Water goes where water wants to go. Engineering it is eventually a losing battle.

In the Bahamas—where I have vacationed for many years—there is no Army Corps of Engineers. Even though erosion is not much of a problem (the islands are comprised primarily of rock), Bahamians tend to build their homes as far away from the water as they can. They leave the beachfront to second-home-building Americans.

In Destin, even the people who are fighting to preserve our valuable beaches realize that dredging sand onto the beaches is a temporary fix. And an expensive one. It doesn’t even take a named storm to devastate our beaches these days.

The technique used to deposit sand along our shores is painful to watch. A boat is loaded with sand dredged from the shoals of East Pass. Then, two or three times a day, it lumbers down the beach, hooks up to a pipe, and pumps sand onto the beach. Bulldozers and front-end loaders then disperse the dredged sand.

I’m no engineer, but the dredge boat should move directly down the beach, and while it is dredging sand onto the beach, it could simultaneously re-establish our long lost gully. Forty years ago we had a “second sand bar.” That bar was separated from the beach by a deep, trench-like gully. It provided protection and acted as a wave break from storms. It has long since disappeared. The restoration of our beaches could be accomplished far more quickly and at a fraction of the cost.

Barack Obama has pledged that, as a country, we will withdraw from Iraq. He has said that we will leave that misbegotten war as carefully as we were careless on getting in. In Destin, we now need to be as cautious and intelligent as we restore our beaches as we were careless and ignorant in destroying them.

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