Beach Renourishment

PLEASE PAY ATTENTION TO WARNING SIGNS AND SAFETY CORDONS. Heavy equipment and sand pumping represent significant danger to anyone in the vicinity. For your own safey, stay out of marked areas.

Pipe laying begins

October 1st - The large pipe used to move sand from the pumping barge to the current work area has started to be laid. Sand should begin moving within the week.

Equipment set to arrive on October 1st

September 29th - Work is expected to begin about October 8th. Be aware that the equipment will be in operation 24X7 once operations begin. This means there will be traffic at the access points (North Beach Lot, both South Beach Lots, and Inlet Avenue), and heavy equipment back-up warning beepers will be going off at all hours. Happily, as the replenishment effort should move rather quickly from one section to the next, this should present only relatively short term inconvenience at each section.

Download the Army Corps of Engineers presentation to City Council from August 14th, 2008

Tybee Beach Set for Castles in the Sand

By Sandra Hudson

Savannah District

Public Affairs Office

US Army Corps of Engineers

September 3, 2008 - For most people a walk on the beach in the moonlight sparks romance, but for residents of Tybee Island, Ga., years of rolling tides caused by the gravitational interaction between the earth and our sky’s ‘nightlight’ have left Tybee’s beach needing new life.

Rebirth gets underway in October when the Operations Division of the Savannah District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers drives an $11 million project placing over 1.2 million cubic yards of sand back on the beach. That would fill a football field 750 feet high.

‘Renourishment,’ a simple process, will replenish the sand eroded from the coast since the last such project, in 2000.

“The first step is to find a borrow site with high-quality, beach sand,” said Burt Moore, Chief of Savannah District’s Dredging Section.

In this case, the borrow site lies 1.5 miles offshore. There, the contractor, Great Lakes Dredge and Dock of Oakbrook, Ill., will anchor a massive rig, pump sand through a creeping pipeline and plump up the eroded coastline.

Moore, a lifetime resident of Tybee Island, admits there will be some inconvenience once the 24-hour operations begin.

“However, the safety of our workers and the public is paramount,” he said.

Sections of the beach will be closed to the public starting on the south end and then creep northward to keep pace with the dredge. Shore lovers will still have access by way of sand arches spanning the pipes.

“I remember one of the best summers of my life was in 1975 when we had dredging operations at Tybee,” said Moore. “My friends and I would drive our bicycles over the sand ramps. Then a movie production company showed up to film the movie Gator here with Burt Reynolds. They were crashing trucks and blowing up stuff over the pipes. We would spend all day at the beach.”

“Beach renourishment has a two-pronged benefit,” said Tybee City Manager Diane Schleicher. “We’ll have better shore protection, and it will help economically because we’ll have a better beach.”

According to Moore, contactors expect to complete the project in March 2009.

August 4, 2008 - Tybee Island's beach renourishment efforts will be getting under way this fall. The request for bid is in circulation from the Army Corps of Engineers, and bid opening took place on August 7th, with bids actually coming in at excellent cost levels. The contract award will be made approximately 30 days after the bid opening. The earliest expected job start date is October 1st. The entire project is expected to take about four months. As project details firm up, information will be posted here. Once the project begins, also come here for updates, maps, work schedules - we will try to keep you as informed as possible by posting information here as quickly as we can.

The pictures below are from the last beach replenishment on Tybee.

Near The Curve before renourishment	At the Pier, before renourishment		Sample barge		Sand dredging bit
Sand hitting the beach		Ready to be spruced up		Finishing touches
Final Product

Tybee Island has a 'sister city' on Amelia Island in Fernandina Beach, Florida. They have a similar beach replenishment project under way right now, and members of the Beach Task Force took a field trip to get a first-hand view of what Tybee will be seeing this fall.