Florida Coastal News | Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines

Op-Ed: In Florida, seawalls are not the answer

by Katie Peek | May 30, 2023 | All stories, Beach Management, Coastal News, Florida Coastal News

On the heels of Hurricane Ian, the Florida Legislature this year passed the Hurricane Restoration Reimbursement Grant Program. The program allocates $50 million to reimburse oceanfront property owners for the construction of seawalls in the name of coastal protection....

Florida beaches were already running low on sand. Then Ian and Nicole hit.

by Rob Young | Dec 12, 2022 | Beach Management, Coastal News, Florida Coastal News, Hurricanes and storms, Ian, 2022, Nicole, 2022, Policy

“I think we’re starting to discover that, despite our best efforts and wanting to throw as much money at this as possible, it has become very difficult to keep these beaches as wide as we would like to keep them,” Robert S. Young, a geology professor at Western...

The Rising Cost of Coastal Florida Living

by Rob Young | Nov 15, 2022 | Coastal News, Florida Coastal News, Ian, 2022, Nicole, 2022, Policy

This is going to get interesting: “By some estimates, there are more than 1.5 million residential condominium units in Florida, and many of them are aging. In June 2021,the Champlain Towers South, a residential high rise in Surfside, Fla., collapsed and left 98 dead....

Let it Grow

by Rob Young | Nov 15, 2022 | All stories, Beach Management, Coastal News, Florida Coastal News, Policy

Someone explain to us why we spend millions of dollars to build a wide, renourished beach, then we mechanically clean that beach all the way up to the vegetation line, never allowing the natural vegetation to expand out onto the berm. This happens all over Florida, in...