Thursday, July 11, 2013

EOM Reader Contest: If GOP heavy Collier County to be propped up with 15,000 dump truck loads of sand, how many dump truck loads of sand have been moved in Florida beach renourishment projects across the state? ... by gimleteye

I couldn't help noting that the Naples Daily News report, "Scaled-back Collier beach renourishment calls for 15,000 dump truck loads of sand", is happening in a wealthy, white and prominently Republican part of Florida. Although the news report identifies named tropical storms as the cause of the beach erosion, in sum total Florida's beach renourishment projects are due to climate change as a result of global warming; claimed by GOP mainstream'ers to be a fiction.

I have sent a public information request to the US Army Corps of Engineers to extrapolate from historical records and current projects, how many dump truck loads of sand have been deployed in beach renourishment projects. I will keep EOM readers posted, on how that request goes. In the meantime, how many dump truck loads of sand have been moved onto Florida beaches, do you guess?

7 comments:

Geniusofdespair said...

over 100,000.

Anonymous said...

Probably need to convert "dump trucks" to "yards" (cubic yards) or tons. A lot of times sand is dredged from offshore without passing through the dump truck measuring cup. The Corps once proposed to barge in aragonite sand from the Bahamas until biologists pointed out the higher albedo (reflectivity) would lower the beach temperature and shift the sex of developing sea turtles. But I do appreciate the irony of climate deniers blindly struggling with effects of climate change. Only in America were churches the last tall buildings to erect lightening rods because, after all, a congregation cannot be seen taking action to oppose the will of God.

Gimleteye said...

LOL. Yes, there would have to be some extrapolation of sand, measured in cubic yards, that is hosed onto Florida beaches through massive dredging pipes.

Does anyone have information, how many cubic yards of sand fits a standard sized dump truck contracted by the Corps?

Geniusofdespair said...

I will find out.

Anonymous said...

If you are counting sand that has been "relocated" to beaches by dredges and pipes, as a volume equivalent of dump truck loads, my guess is over 500,000 truck loads. But if that guess were off by a factor of 10 I wouldn't be surprised either.

Anonymous said...

Funny thing about where we get our sand for Beach re-nourishment, and the effect on wildlife.

The quorries in central florida have set rules in Tallahassee making them the only source.

My question is... "Isn't Bahamian Sand from Bimini, only 45 miles away, more like Miami's Beach Sand, than sand from a quarry in Pasco County hundreds of miles away and inland.

Anonymous said...

LOL with the public info request. The Corps isn't required (via FOIA) to produce anything new but only to regurgitate and produce what is already in writing somewhere. They don't measure anything in dumptrucks.

Ask for copies of all the beach renourishment permits issued in the last 10 years and see what the volume permitted is, and ask about their own volume via Corps public work renourishment projects.