Where are florida’s biggest beach erosion problem areas?

Miami-Dade County lost 170,000 cubic yards of sand during Hurricane Irma. It’s the latest blow to South Florida beaches in perennial decline. Nearly half the state’s coast—411 miles’ worth of beach—is considered “critically eroded.” This is due in part to storms and underfunded beach maintenance, but really it’s a result of unchecked coastal development. Developer-friendly building codes have bunkered more than 100 miles of Florida shoreline behind jetties and seawalls, which hold back water but accelerate beach erosion. Fixed structures make natural coastline movement impossible.

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Killed hundreds battering through the Caribbean, and knocked out power, forced evacuations, and flooded beaches as it scoured the Florida coastline. But thinking long-term, the storm is a punctuation mark in the creeping erosion narrative playing out on many southeastern shorelines.

Erosion is nothing new. Shorelines experience seasonal ebbing from winter, and typically regrow in the summer. Longer term, things like development—and way longer term, sea level rise—cause a more gradual coastal deterioration. Big storms, like Hurricane Matthew, have the potential to alter, or hasten those other erosional patterns, by reshaping the shoreline, devouring dunes, or demolishing human-made fortifications.