The Stuyvesant, a 400 foot hopper dredge was used to pump sand from an offshore borrow area and transport it to a pumping station nearshore.
From there, the sand was pumped to the beach through a pipeline. The operation delivered 25,000 cubic yards of sand to the beach each day. That's equivalent to a football field 15 feet deep in sand.
The sand was initially stacked on the shoreline to form a 280 foot wide beach. The builders then let the wave action distribute the sand to form a natural slope. The beach will appear to erode quickly but it is actually performing as expected and should be about 180 feet wide after 1 year. The sand from the new beach will shift to the shallow nearshore waters and help "trip" waves. All of the new fill will help to protect the shoreline from storm damage and provide space for recreation along some of the most popular stretches of beach in the county.
The borrow area sand is slightly larger in grain size than the native beach sand and grey in color. Some of this color will bleach out in the sun, although it is not expected to match the color of the natural beach.
Coastal Resources