Beach Access and After Shots

05/01/08 - Week Six, Beach Access & After Shots

Also in the photo gallery you'll find examples of how the "finished" beach is pushed up around homes and structures, as shown in our second photo. Those homeowners who removed all their fencing and/or boardwalk stairs did appear to get more sand -- although it is apparent every effort was made to give the best result possible, regardless of what the situation was at any given property.

Finally, we come to the topic of beach access. As written last week, it's only recently come to light that some of our earlier assumptions about total beach access were incorrect. Not all areas will allow for a "pathway" behind the roped-off areas of active construction. As a result, the ability to traverse north-south to get around the rope via the sandy beach is not always going to be possible, particularly in areas where the erosion is right up into the dune line. However, for example, a section of the boundary fence between Barrier Dunes and Sea Cliffs is being temporarily removed so that whichever complex has beach access during restoration, people from either community can use those walkovers.

We would strongly encourage adjoing neighborhoods with access to work together and "borrow" each other's access points as the project moves past. If no such arrangement is possible, there may be some period of time where gulf-front residents or guests will need to go to one of our public beach accesses. The amount of time a property may be restricted from adjacent beach access should not be more than a matter of days, but we don't want to make any specific estimations until we have some further experience with the project's advancement.

We have been a "victim of our own success" this past week, in that the project has been advancing so well and so rapidly, the active work areas and roped-off sections of the beach have been larger than what is typical. Again, please know everything possible is being done to minimize the impacts to your enjoyment and access of the beach, but some inconvenience is unavoidable because, as always, safety is our number-one priority.

We're hoping to get some night shots this evening and will add them to the gallery if they come out well enough to ascertain what is being photographed!

As of this morning, active work was just north of Sea Cliffs' northernmost walkover, as shown in our third photo. A scheduled refueling is expected fairly soon, but with the current rate of progress, we anticipate passing to the south of Barrier Dunes in approximately ten more days -- but always subject to change of a fewer or greater number of days!

We do apologize for the blog being a few days late. Although we wanted to adhere to our Monday schedule, we felt it was more important to have additional discussion with the engineer and contractor on the beach access situations so we could be sure to provide the most accurate information possible.