Bwick News column on Glynn Co and coastal sand sharing system
neillh...@earthlink.net
Column/Perspective: Nature has a way of shaping beaches on its own
- 6 hrs ago
I can’t figure exactly what we want when it comes to the sand on St. Simons Island’s beach.
It was only a few years ago, we had people saying we needed to renourish the beaches, pump a little sand on them. Now there’s apparently too much. Well, it’s not that there’s too much, it sort of like my weight; it’s in the wrong place.
The county wants a Georgia Department of Natural Resources permit to fill in a slough around Massengale Park. I grew up on Hartwell Lake, which was a real treat. But I’m the grandson of sharecroppers and the lake came us. There was no way my grandparents could afford a lakefront lot. Heck, they didn’t own the house they lived in. There was a cove with crappie, bass, bream and catfish, and if you weren’t careful you could catch a carp that tasted like the red clay bottom.
Anyway, I digress. Kids love water, and I never grew up. Nonetheless, I don’t go into the water much anymore, but I like looking at it. I like that slough, and the condos, beach houses and a hotel have a good view of it. They view it more like a slough of despond like in John Bunyan’s allegory “Pilgrim’s Progress,’’ in which Christian fell into the slough and was sinking under his sins and fear until Help pulls him free.
In modern parlance, a slough of despond is a state of total hopelessness, depression, and despair.
I reckon DNR would play the role of Help.
These ponds/lagoons/sloughs, whatever they are, are not new. We first came to St. Simons in the mid-1980s driving over from near Waycross where I was working at the time. We met coworkers for a party near the Coast Guard station where some of the men in our party were seining in a slough. It has long since filled in with sand, mud and silt and has some healthy vegetation growing in it.
There have been several others over the years, and there’s one now at Gould’s Inlet. It was just a few years ago that a couple of homeowners there had big bags of sand hauled in to fortify t heir property because it appeared the ocean was going to take it.
When I had a couple of hours to spare, I’d fish off the rocks in front of the houses but those rocks are under several feet of sand now. How long that will last I don’t know, but the sand there seems to be retreating with every high tide.
Gould’s Inlet is the ultimate shape shifter going through a transformation almost daily. The Atlantic giveth and the Atlantic taketh away with some help from people who walk on the dunes.
I have a friend who spent about six weeks on Cape Cod in Massachusetts and came home to St. Simons and found a beach different from the one he walked daily. Ah Massachusetts, state motto Ense Petit Placidam Sub Libertate Quietem, which translates to “By the Sword We Seek Peace, but Peace Only Under Liberty.” I cannot believe Massachusetts endorses sword violence. We offer the following alternative and obviously more timely mottos: Taxus Maximus or Semper Liberales or Odium per Trumpus.
But back to our happy little island. We went through some deep pain on our first talk of beach renourishment in the 1980s. That’s when I first heard of the late marine geologist and Duke professor Orrin Pilkey Jr. who did research on Sapelo Island from 1962 until 1965.
I heard Pilkey once on a panel on radio debating the pumping of sand on eroding coasts. The rest of the panel was heavy on tourism and development types and very much in favor of renourishment.
“I’m the only one up here,” Pilkey told his audience, “willing to let a condo fall into the ocean.”
At another time, the historic and much beloved Cape Hatteras lighthouse was in peril.
“Let it fall in,’’ Pilkey suggested in keeping with his assertion that “nothing is so important that it can’t fall into the sea.”
That was then when a modest beach house was worth about $400,000. Now you’re talking millions of dollars of stucco, open concept kitchens and marble tile.
But filling in the slough is not about saving a rich man’s dwelling built on sand. (In fairness I should add here the houses have deep, concrete foundations.
This is about making sure the sun rises over the ocean instead of the dunes, easing the walk to the water burdened with ice chests, chairs and toys, destroying mosquito habitat and eliminating some floating plastic bridges.
To do that, I think, the plan is to take down some low dunes east of the slough and use that sand for fill. I thought we liked dunes and that they were protected. We’re told dunes give us a measure of protection from tropical storms. I guess we like waves washing up to front lawns.
Pilkey said the only way to save barrier islands was to go with the flow, let the ocean take what it will. He felt that way even after Hurricane Camille destroyed his parents’ home in Waveland, Mississippi.
If we’re not careful we’re going to have a beach lined with ugly granite boulders. Oh wait. Never mind.
In this case we’re not talking about the ocean taking; we’re talking about it banking to much sand then sneaking in behind it.
Why don’t we name this slough or at least change some street names? There’s a bit of poetry in Sloughview Drive. Also we could call it the This Ain’t East Beach Bayou. Until lately, East Beach was north of the former Coast Guard station. The rest was just the beach. Maybe the logic is the sand washed down from East Beach and brought the name with it.
I’m sure the DNR and the County Commission will put a lot of thought in it before making the right choice. I’m also sure that the wind from one storm could conspire with the ocean to wipe out whatever they do.
I don’t know why, but I find a lot of encouragement in that.
County seeks permission to fill in tidal pools on East Beach
Glynn County wants to fill in the tidal pool that is currently spanned by a temporary bridge just south of Coast Guard Beach to give residents and visitors beach access on St. Simons Island.