Study on Geotubes in Texas

Here is an in depth study of geotubes in Texas. I typed in "Failed Geotubes" in Google and this was the first article to come up. It is technical and in depth but basically you can jump to the end and read the list of conculsions but if you have the time it is an interesting read. Some of the photos show how horrible the beach can look with these "worms". Basically they are expensive, have to be re-covered with sand and holes repaired after every storm. And in some areas, look at the photo on page 24 there is no beach left where they were installed; same affect as seawalls.

http://www.beg.utexas.edu/coastal/2001 final report.pdf

Great article. Thank you

Dear Dave R,
Thank you.
It is horrible to see so graphically how the seawalls and geotubes that private BF owners have put up will destroy our beautiful beaches.

What is predictable and also disturbing is that the seawall owners are pressuring the county to use tax dollars to assist them pay for their seawall environmental ?take? and the mitigation plan.

The county is already helping the beach front owners by facilitating the writing of a grant to help pay for the take and mitigation plans and currently plans to charge the seawall owners a fee. I support this facilitation.

But the seawall owners want more. Seawall owners are lobbying for a county wide ?blanket plan?. This indeed would be a nice ?cozy security blanket? for the seawall owners.

The ?blanket plan? that the seawall owners are seeking is ?code? for placing costs for the seawall take and mitigation plan on the taxpayers .


Do we really want the county subsidizing or encouraging seawalls which are notorious for destroying beaches?

This is to be discussed at the next BCC meeting. We should all call the county commissioners to tell them what we think. You can bet many seawall owners are.

Does anyone know if there are requirements by the county or state to maintain sand and vegetation covering seawalls or geotubes? I have already seen edges exposed as well as bolts. What about after a storm? Is there an obligation by the property owner to clean debris, re-cover exposed portions with sand, etc. ?

What about if the property changes hands and the new property owner isn't even aware there is a buried structure? Would this need to be disclosed by the previous owner? Would possible liability be with the previous owner or the current owner?

Does anyone know if there are requirements by the county or state to maintain sand and vegetation covering seawalls or geotubes? I have already seen edges exposed as well as bolts. What about after a storm? Is there an obligation by the property owner to clean debris, re-cover exposed portions with sand, etc. ?

What about if the property changes hands and the new property owner isn't even aware there is a buried structure? Would this need to be disclosed by the previous owner? Would possible liability be with the previous owner or the current owner?

Possibly both. I am not an attorney! If the current homeowner did no DD as part of a feasibility study, he may be liable too, even if the previous owner did not disclose. That is the case with environmental issues often times. Also included in the liability could be the engineer who designed the wall, the construction company who erected the wall, and the manufactorer of a manufactored wall.

As I mentioned last year, once a tube is exposed after a few hours of the sand washing away, the debris from the walkovers, which will be floating around, will very likely be able to rip the tubes, causing extreme damage to the tubes and thereby causing them to fail when the storm actually arrives.

Again, I'm just using a little common sense. No geotube expert here.

I suspect the county will be saddled with the tab to maintain and repair seawalls and geotubes.

The argument from the GF owners will be: (1) You (the county)"allowed" them to be built in the first place (same argument for allowing seawall protection of the GF homes that were "allowed" to be built); and (2) The beach is the cash cow of the community, without it this resort is nothing.

The dye has been cast, the seawalls and geotubes are here...this is now SoWal's future. The county needs to start assessing higher taxes (homeowners & bed) in preparation for this inevitable expense.

As a Civil Engineer I have done numerous erosion projects albeit none on the beach, but all with similarities to the one mentioned in the study. There are a few different ways to design a solution and even more ways to interpret the intent of those solutions once they are in place. Most people want hard solutions, i.e. concrete and steel, when their property is threatened by erosion, be it on the bank of a stream, or abutting the beach. They want to see something physically protecting their investment. Structures such as seawalls or lined channels are always very strongly stated short term solutions. They almost always cause more problems then they solve; just look at New Orleans. Nature has a way of reclaiming its property. Erosion occurs for basically two reasons, one is just the natural process of time as you can see in the grand canyon and the other is caused human intrusion. Nature tends to take millions of years while human caused erosion can take a very short time. Concrete and steel can be thought of as just adding more human intrusion in the mix and thus causing more long term problems. Letting nature take its course will inevitably remove the offending human intrusion of houses on dunes or paving over fields, and the end results are usually not acceptable to the property owners. Correct usage of soft structures such as geotube, geofabrics etc. is an attempt to help nature mend with the results that are desired by the community. They are generally put in as temporary measures with a long term goal of helping naturally occurring plants reestablish and secure the eroding soils. The plants and accompanying root structure armor the dunes, stream banks etc. These type projects are long term solutions, but also require a longer time for the plants to reestablish to the point of fully stabilizing the repair. There are also plenty of people out there that will put in a soft structure as if it were a piece of concrete, that is, without the long term goal of restoration in mind?only the short term protection in mind. If you go back through the report and look at the photographs you will notice that the geotubes in the study did help to prevent a lot of undercutting of the dunes, and probably have helped to keep the area in a better position for a quicker recovery and to continue to build back the dunes.

I am not about to say that geotubes are the only way to accomplish beach restoration. Grayton had good results with the sand fence and sea oats program. Ultimately that would provide a more or less all natural solution, but it takes a long time. Not building houses on the beach or dunes would be a good step too, but probably not one that property owners, nor vacationers, would like. Generally speaking if the funds can be devoted to developing a good solution rather than funding legal fights everyone wins. Regional solutions that allow a comprehensive approach are often better than a confederacy of projects where one undermines the other.

The dye has been cast, the seawalls and geotubes are here...this is now SoWal's future. The county needs to start assessing higher taxes (homeowners & bed) in preparation for this inevitable expense.

I guess this is a stupid and na?ve question, but why couldn't the county (or some official agency or administrative unit) just order the seawalls torn down and the geotubes removed?

I guess this is a stupid and na?ve question, but why couldn't the county (or some official agency or administrative unit) just order the seawalls torn down and the geotubes removed?

I equally out of my league here, but I'd venture to say that the whole seawall/geotube thing will not die quietly. Not when there's so much $$ involved. Money does strange things to people. And then there's always that rare commodity that Smiling JOe mentioned: common sense. Seems to be a dearth of that, too. :bang:

I guess this is a stupid and na?ve question, but why couldn't the county (or some official agency or administrative unit) just order the seawalls torn down and the geotubes removed?

They can...but they won't. REASON: $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

The 2 biggest motivators (as always): Fear and Greed.

Impacts of Seawalls

copied from Surfrider site



1) Passive erosion -"Wherever a hard structure is built along a shoreline undergoing long-term net erosion, the shoreline will eventually migrate landward beyond the structure. The effect of this migration will be the gradual loss of beach in front of the seawall or revetment as the water deepens and the shoreface moves landward.... While private structures may be temporarily saved, the public beach is lost. This process of passive erosion appears to be a generally agreed upon result of fixing the position of the shoreline on an otherwise eroding stretch of coast, and is independent of the type of seawall constructed." It is evident that passive erosion will eventually destroy the recreational beach area unless this area is continually replenished. Excessive passive erosion may impact the beach profile such that shallow areas required to create breaking waves for surfing are lost (Seaside Reef).

2) Placement loss - Seawalls are placed on the beach. In many cases, construction of seawalls is on public property (beach). In Solana Beach for example most land for seawalls is leased free of charge to the property owners. This is a taking of extremely valuable public property.

3) Active Erosion - Refers to the interrelationship between wall and beach whereby due to wave reflection, storm surf zone narrowing and a thousand other processes the wall may actually increase the rate of loss of beach. This is site specific and dependent on sand input. There are varying opinions on if this effect actually exists. However, as watchdogs of the coast, until there is overwhelming evidence that this effect is not significant, many of us have opposed seawalls on this basis.

4) Public access impacts - these can be a result of passive erosion, placement loss or active erosion. Seawalls built on eroding beaches, will lead to the loss of access. Solana Beach and North County beaches are eroding.

5) Visual/aesthetic impacts - Seawalls are ugly and detract from simple pleasures as a walk on the beach.

6) Economic issues - local, state or federal subsidies or construction to protect private property, or insurance coverage. Construction is performed on State or Municipal land. The public has never been compensated for this loss of valuable property.

7) Loss of sand supplied by eroding bluffs that are armored. A minimal fee for this sand is collected from property owners for the sand that would provide beach material. Additionally, the eroded area would create a beach. We do not feel the public is sufficiently mitigated for the loss of sand and beach.

8) The most important thing to remember is that a seawall is never built to protect the beach. Rather, it is built to protect property, structures or a cliff from erosion.

As a Civil Engineer I have done numerous erosion projects albeit none on the beach, but all with similarities to the one mentioned in the study. There are a few different ways to design a solution and even more ways to interpret the intent of those solutions once they are in place. Most people want hard solutions, i.e. concrete and steel, when their property is threatened by erosion, be it on the bank of a stream, or abutting the beach. They want to see something physically protecting their investment. Structures such as seawalls or lined channels are always very strongly stated short term solutions. They almost always cause more problems then they solve; just look at New Orleans. Nature has a way of reclaiming its property. Erosion occurs for basically two reasons, one is just the natural process of time as you can see in the grand canyon and the other is caused human intrusion. Nature tends to take millions of years while human caused erosion can take a very short time. Concrete and steel can be thought of as just adding more human intrusion in the mix and thus causing more long term problems. Letting nature take its course will inevitably remove the offending human intrusion of houses on dunes or paving over fields, and the end results are usually not acceptable to the property owners. Correct usage of soft structures such as geotube, geofabrics etc. is an attempt to help nature mend with the results that are desired by the community. They are generally put in as temporary measures with a long term goal of helping naturally occurring plants reestablish and secure the eroding soils. The plants and accompanying root structure armor the dunes, stream banks etc. These type projects are long term solutions, but also require a longer time for the plants to reestablish to the point of fully stabilizing the repair. There are also plenty of people out there that will put in a soft structure as if it were a piece of concrete, that is, without the long term goal of restoration in mind?only the short term protection in mind. If you go back through the report and look at the photographs you will notice that the geotubes in the study did help to prevent a lot of undercutting of the dunes, and probably have helped to keep the area in a better position for a quicker recovery and to continue to build back the dunes.

I am not about to say that geotubes are the only way to accomplish beach restoration. Grayton had good results with the sand fence and sea oats program. Ultimately that would provide a more or less all natural solution, but it takes a long time. Not building houses on the beach or dunes would be a good step too, but probably not one that property owners, nor vacationers, would like. Generally speaking if the funds can be devoted to developing a good solution rather than funding legal fights everyone wins. Regional solutions that allow a comprehensive approach are often better than a confederacy of projects where one undermines the other.

Thanks for the good post Bdarg! How 'bout contributing more often?

"Mr. Rita" also works with erosion on nearly a daily basis, but not beachside.

Thanks for the good post Bdarg! How 'bout contributing more often?

"Mr. Rita" also works with erosion on nearly a daily basis, but not beachside.

He can't because I am always talking.:roll: That's what he tells everybody.

He can't because I am always talking.:roll: That's what he tells everybody.

:rolling: Excuses, excuses!

Thanks to Dave R. for the additional info on how seawalls destroy beaches.
This is very upsetting.

What is even more appalling is that our county government let BF owners put up these monstrosities.

Even worse is the county is even considering subsidizing the mitigation plan that is now required as a result of the environmental damage of the seawalls.

Below is the list of our County Commissioners to call:

Commissioner Scott Brannon
Tel: (850) 835-4860
Fax: (850) 835-4836
E-mail:* brascott@co.walton.fl.us


Commissioner Kenneth Pridgen *
Phone: (850) 834-6328
Fax: (850) 834-6385
Email: prikenneth@co.walton.fl.us

Commmissioner Larry Jones
Donna Walsinkham, District 3*Executive Assistant
Phone: (850) 892-8474
Fax: (850)892-8475
e-mail: jonlarry@co.walton.fl.us

Commissioner Ro Cuchens
(850) 835-4834.

Commissioner Cindy Meadows
Santa Rosa Beach, FL. 32459
Phone: (850) 622-3059
Fax: (850) 622-3067
e-mail:* meacindy@co.walton.fl.us

...
This is very upsetting.

What is even more appalling is that our county government let BF owners put up these monstrosities.
...

more upsetting to me is the looks of the beach at Blue Mtn Beach. This afternoon, the Gulf's waves were touching the base of the sand placed in front ot the seawalls. I don't rememeber there being a hurricane anywhere close to us today. :idontno: In some places east of the main access, the beach is very narrow, other places, it is fairly wide. Some trash litters the beach, but the trash from contractors of the seawalls is much, much worse. The seawall which I saw being constructed today will not hold up during a storm -- I am not a betting man, but I bet you money that it wont hold. I noticed other wooden seawalls, before being covered with sand, which had holes in them which waves will surely penetrate if the water gets high enough, and when it escapes from behind the seawall, it will take all of the sand with it. Also, I noticed a pile of concrete at the water's edge, many boards with protruding nails scattered in front of seawalls, metal banding rusting on the beach, numerous ropes, pieces of scrap wood everywhere, a broken down crane, footprints going up the sand which GF owners placed at high costs as dunes, etc, etc. One of the public accesses located adjacent to a seawalled property has the seawall coming back onto the property at the end of the wall (making a u-shaped seawall). This is because the access is not protected. Make sense to me. HOWEVER, what the phuck were they thinking not bringing it back at least as far as the cliffs which were exposed in the previous storms? That will be the first one to wash out after the first decent sized storm. I got more money to bet on that one. Blue Mtn not too long ago one of my favorite stretches of beach. Big Redfish Lake was right there with it. Now :idontno: it makes me cry to see all of the poop, and I am not talking about dog poop, nor Gulf Trace poop, but the crap left on the beach for the water to scatter down the beaches. Currently some of the view from that beach remind me of what the beach must look like in Cuba or some other third world place where people cannot afford to clean up after themselves. I don't give a crap if the dump truck is coming tomorrow -- "that sh_t ain't right," as my friend says. I took some photos, but no one on this board would want to see the crap I saw today. I feel as hestitant to share those as I did wanting to share the damage after the hurricanes.

They can...but they won't. REASON: $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

The 2 biggest motivators (as always): Fear and Greed.

Well, that just stinks!

Much of the sand placed in front of this newly installed seawall behind a condo just west of the regional beach access in Blue Mountain Beach has already begun to wash away. Will homeowners be able to keep sand in front of these walls or will we be left with a narrow beach bordered by a stark seawall? Will we have any beach at all?"

more upsetting to me is the looks of the beach at Blue Mtn Beach. This afternoon, the Gulf's waves were touching the base of the sand placed in front ot the seawalls. I don't rememeber there being a hurricane anywhere close to us today. :idontno: In some places east of the main access, the beach is very narrow, other places, it is fairly wide. Some trash litters the beach, but the trash from contractors of the seawalls is much, much worse. The seawall which I saw being constructed today will not hold up during a storm -- I am not a betting man, but I bet you money that it wont hold. I noticed other wooden seawalls, before being covered with sand, which had holes in them which waves will surely penetrate if the water gets high enough, and when it escapes from behind the seawall, it will take all of the sand with it. Also, I noticed a pile of concrete at the water's edge, many boards with protruding nails scattered in front of seawalls, metal banding rusting on the beach, numerous ropes, pieces of scrap wood everywhere, a broken down crane, footprints going up the sand which GF owners placed at high costs as dunes, etc, etc. One of the public accesses located adjacent to a seawalled property has the seawall coming back onto the property at the end of the wall (making a u-shaped seawall). This is because the access is not protected. Make sense to me. HOWEVER, what the phuck were they thinking not bringing it back at least as far as the cliffs which were exposed in the previous storms? That will be the first one to wash out after the first decent sized storm. I got more money to bet on that one. Blue Mtn not too long ago one of my favorite stretches of beach. Big Redfish Lake was right there with it. Now :idontno: it makes me cry to see all of the poop, and I am not talking about dog poop, nor Gulf Trace poop, but the crap left on the beach for the water to scatter down the beaches. Currently some of the view from that beach remind me of what the beach must look like in Cuba or some other third world place where people cannot afford to clean up after themselves. I don't give a crap if the dump truck is coming tomorrow -- "that sh_t ain't right," as my friend says. I took some photos, but no one on this board would want to see the crap I saw today. I feel as hestitant to share those as I did wanting to share the damage after the hurricanes.

Great signature quote S.J.
i.e.
"If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience?" -- G B Shaw

If the attempts to save the Cape Hatteras Light House are any example, then both the dumped sand and the sea wall will illustrate Mr. Shaw's observation once again. Those that learned from the Hatteras lesson, or the more patient investors, will buy property a street or two back and wait for the gulf front to come to them.