Lynn,
        You got it right.  Beach "stabilization" does not exist and sand migration
cannot be stopped, regardless of the claims of politicians.
        A surprising oversight (or I've missed it) to this discussion is the
ecological devastation at the source of the sand.  Yes, the intertidal and
shallow water species will be smothered by the sand pumped up and it's
something of a bonanza for shell collectors, getting fresh deeper water
specimens without getting their feet wet, but the ocean bottom where
they're pumping the sand from is going to be as must a wasteland as the
shoreline becomes.  Perhaps more, since I would suspects they pump from a
larger area than they're piling sand on.
        BTW, I have seen at least one area, in NJ I think (Cape May?), where you
have to pay a fee to go on the beach.
 
Peter
 
At 09:53 AM 12/3/98 -0500, Lynn Scheu wrote:
>Somebody with some more knowledge about beach dynamics please step in here.
> What follows is a little bit of knowledge and a lot of speculation and
>interpolation (and of course some emotional stuff of my own!):
>
>Don't beaches in nature come and go, move from here to there, form, erode
>and reform?  If there was a lovely sandy slope on Beach X in historic
>memory, it was there for a reason, it would seem, because of winds and
>currents depositing sand on Beach X. If this sand washes away, it is going
>to be redeposited somewhere, on Beach X again, because of the same
>prevailing winds and currents, or on Beach W or Beach Y, depending on the
>prevailing currents and winds, and the current contours of the coastline.
>If Beach Y has developed a lovely white sandy beach in the recent past, its
>position may be blocking redeposition of the sand back on its historic
>Beach X.
>
>Thus we might have to eradicate lovely Beach Y, (!!) or keep renourishing
>the geologically passe Beach X on and on, to the detriment of other
>worthwhile projects and, more important to us as enthusiasts of marine
>life,  the said marine life offshore of Beach X.   Neither seems to me to
>be a sane course of action.
>
>So what about tourism? This is the same cry one hears in the Pacific
>northwest about the lumber industry and the spotted owls.  These people
>have been lumbermen for several generations.  But they are 1) destroying
>the environment and 2) eradicating the much-demeaned and cursed-at little
>bird, which is somewhat of a symbol as well as a vanishing species.
>
>The best response I ever heard to the question you asked was delivered in
>response to the lumbermen who were asking the same question:  How do we
>feed our families?  How do we survive?  The answer was to get retrained to
>do something else. This same dilemma is facing everyone else in the land,
>with expectations for all of us of having to change careers several times
>in our lives.  Why should the timber [tourist] industry be exempt?  At the
>end of a long and eloquent and moving and to-the-point speech, the speaker
>revealed that he had practiced exactly what he was preaching...his
>ex-industry and that of his forefathers was..guess what?  Whaling!
>Everything changes.
>
>We can't keep on privately owning our beaches and we can't keep on fighting
>Mother Nature. She doesn't like a fixed beach and will do her worst to
>destroy it. Beaches belong to the sea and the earth, and call me a romantic
>if you want,  (or whatever other names are occurring to you at the moment)
>but I believe trying to mold them and own them and insisting upon deriving
>an insured and continuous profit from them is like trying to cage the wind!
> And pumping sand onto the beach from the live waters offshore seems to me
>a bit like governmental price supports on tobacco! Spend a lot of feel-good
>money to destroy us.
>
>Also, Carol, they've shown in the movies that if you build it, they will
>come. Stick a skee ball cum cotton candy stand in the middle of a desert
>and the tourists will go there. Build a country music town in absolutely
>nowhere and they will arrive by busloads.  Plunk enough rides and cute
>stuff in the midst of a hot, steamy central Florida swamp and you get
>Disney World.  Beaches are getting a bit raw and natural for the average
>world tourist, and besides, they don't have coin slots or admission fees.
>Where's the fun in that? Other attractions can replace the vanished beach,
>but they will take work and imagination. And the transition will be tough.
>
>Lynn, also ducking the unfriendly fire