PANAMA CITY BEACH — Coastal engineers say the sand on Panama City Beach shouldn’t need to be replenished for several years if the area can avoid any major storm damage.
Officials from Coastal Planning and Engineering presented findings from their 2014 beach monitoring survey, which is completed prior to hurricane season every year, at Tuesday’s Bay County Tourist Development Council (TDC) meeting. Engineer Tara Brenner said that while the beach likely won’t need nourishing until 2020, the company still is keeping an eye on the Carillon Beach and Pinnacle Port areas on the west end, which are losing sand quicker than others.
However, what was originally thought of as an erosion “hot spot” has started to correct itself.
“We do see that the erosion rate is slowing down,” Brenner said, adding that the beach as a whole has remained wide enough to absorb most of the area’s fluctuations. “You seem to have a very variable shoreline here, and as long as your beach is wide enough to absorb the shoreline variability, we won’t need to construct a nourishment project. We’re going to continue to monitor and continue to make sure your beach is wide enough to absorb the shoreline variability.”
While the west end may go first, Brenner said it still will take several years to have enough problem areas to prompt a nourishment project.
Beach nourishment and care is one of the major functions of the TDC, which began its ongoing beach nourishment project in Panama City Beach in 1996. The last major beach nourishment in Bay County was a $13 million project completed in 2011 at Carillon Beach and Pinnacle Port.
The TDC is in the final stages of renewing its project permit with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and received its state permit from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection last year.
Together, the permits will allow the agency to access 6.7 million cubic yards of sand off the coast of eastern Bay County for use in beach nourishment projects for the next 15 years.