A federal project starting next week will cordon off a sizable part of South Hutchinson Island shoreline as it recovers from erosion exacerbated by Atlantic storm activity this past summer.
Dollman Beach, which spans approximately 3.3 miles near condominiums along the barrier island, will be closed intermittently from Jan. 5 to June 30 as contractors refresh the shoreline with new sand.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers awarded a contract of nearly $14.7 million in federal funds to Manson Construction, Inc., according to a Dec. 17 county release. Manson, a Seattle-based firm, is known for repairing escarpments caused by ocean erosion across North American beaches.
Contractors from Manson will begin dredging Dollman Beach on Jan. 22 with an “anticipated project completion date” of June 30, the release said. It added the “recommended plan” of dredging “includes beach and dune nourishment from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection” near the St. Lucie County/Indian River County line.
Much of this renutrition builds upon efforts to restore Dollman Beach after it incurred significant damage from Hurricanes Ian and Nicole in 2022. The Army Corps will source approximately 315,000 cubic yards of “beach compatible sand” from deposits in St. Lucie Shoals found around 3.5 miles offshore, wrote county spokesperson Erick Gill in a Dec. 19 email.
The deposits of St. Lucie Shoals match the “native sands” at Dollman, found between Normandy Beach to the north and the St. Lucie/Martin county line to the south, Gill wrote. Manson will also place accessibility ramps for areas of high-volume foot traffic “outside of active construction areas” for the duration of the project.
By the time of the county’s announcement, Dollman Beach had been littered with strings of seagrass left over from strong king tide activity in mid-October. Flooding induced by king tides caused at least two South Hutchinson beaches – Walton Rocks Park and Ocean Bay Beachside Park – to close for over a week.
Continued shoreline erosion could instill concern in new homeowners and vacationers seeking beachfront property, such as Mike and Sally Hack. The couple, like others visiting St. Lucie away from the Northern cold, navigated uneven sandbars 3 to 4 feet above the waterline on an evening walk Dec. 18. “It seems like each year, we lose a little more,” Mike Hack, 67, said. “There’s about a 6-foot drop-off on the beach.”
The Hacks began wintering at their condo near Dollman in 2021, which gave them more thorough knowledge of nearby erosion. “We used to be able to only afford coming down here a week or two, and now we’re down here a few months,” Mike Heck said. “I’d say the last five or six years, we’ve seen more erosion than we have in the past; but, we’re down here longer.”
The escarpments the Hacks witnessed extended to local tourism sites including restaurants along State Road A1A and the Eustace Mansion, known for its Christmas lights. (The light display was canceled there this year due to the May 16 death of homeowner/insurance entrepreneur Robert Eustace, 80.)
The sandbar near the Eustace Mansion reached escarpments stretching around 8 feet above the shoreline, creating doubts in Mike Hack’s mind that the barrier islands could be a “livable habitat” for himself and others, he said.
“That barrier island’s keeping the weather and storms off the mainland,” Mike Hack said, “so this is going to take the brunt of the storms here. I don’t know that these were ever meant to have condos and stuff on them.
“I think they’re bringing the beach back for the vacationers but the ocean seems to take it out again,” Mike Hack said. “It’s a continual process but I’d say the county’s doing a good job of putting it back.”
Beach renutrition and its relationship to climatology remain critical topics for Dr. Gary Zarillo of the College of Engineering and Science at the Florida Institute of Technology. He has accumulated over 40 years’ experience researching coastal resiliency along the Eastern Seaboard.
The sands of St. Lucie Shoals encountered few changes from “sea rise through the Intercontinental Shelf” found further into the Atlantic, Zurillo shared in a Dec. 19 interview. “That’s always an important consideration in building these beach-fill projects.
“Here, on the East Coast,” Zarillo said, “these shoals are stable. These kind of systems occur all up and down the East Coast.” He added the Army Corps “knows this” through their studies of the Intercontinental Shelf since the 1960s.
Zarillo added St. Lucie, like other Florida counties, tries to keep a balance on maintaining beaches between sand renourishment and “pressure for development.”
“I see this all the time.”
Severe storms, such as Ian, Nicole and Milton (2024) may compound the concern and outpouring of resources for maintaining shorelines. “I would expect that those recent storms probably increased the need for beach renourishment; maybe the storms themselves distributed the Army Corps and other rebuilding projects,” Zarillo said. “I wouldn’t expect it would slow the projects.
“The fundamental question is – and this is more about local managers – ‘How do you want to manage your beachfront properties? How do you want to manage shoreline with respect to development?’” Zarillo posited. “So, at some point in time, there’s going to be a day of reckoning and it might come with the next major storm impact.”
Dollman Beach last received a significant renourishment in 2022 that addressed the impacts of Hurricanes Ian and Nicole within weeks of each other, county records show.
The beach last received repairs made through an “initial Federal Beach Project completed in 2022,” Gill wrote, adding the county sought further aid from the Army Corps to restore the beach “to pre-storm conditions.”