The dunes on Palm Beach’s South End coastline will soon rise again as the town begins its effort to replenish the coastline south of Lake Worth Pier, Coastal Manager Sara Gutekunst announced during a recent Town Council meeting.
Gutekunst said on Nov. 12 that workers had transferred 57 truckloads worth of sand from the stockpile at Phipps Ocean Park to the project’s staging area, the Atriums Condominium’s lot, the prior day.
“We’re really happy with how its moving along and we are going to start moving that sand down the beach this week,” she told the council.
Town officials predict the project should take around five weeks, Gutekunst said. During that time, the sand moved from Phipps Ocean Park to the Atriums will be shoveled onto a conveyor belt and loaded onto trucks on the coastline to rebuild the dunes from the town’s beaches just south of the Lake Worth Pier to the coastline of South Palm Beach.
But the plans have been slightly tweaked. Gutekunst said the town’s original idea of using the Boynton Inlet beach access for the trucks collecting the sand from the conveyor belt had to be scrapped due to poor beach conditions.
Instead, the Atriums Condominium allowed the project’s workers to transfer the coastline equipment over its dunes, Gutekunst said.
“The Atriums was really, really great with working with us,” she said.
Council President Pro-Tem Lew Crampton commended the condominium and its association president, Fred Kamel, for collaborating with the town.
The project’s start comes less than a year after the City of Lake Worth Beach withdrew a beach access agreement it had with Palm Beach, splitting this segment of coastline from the original Phipps Ocean Park Beach Nourishment and Dune replenishment project.
That left officials scrambling for access to the coastline south of the Lake Worth Beach Pier until the Atrium agreed to host the project in June. That agreement was cemented in a Aug. 12 memorandum of understanding between the town and condo.
Diego Diaz Lasa is a journalist at the Palm Beach Daily News, part of the USA TODAY Florida Network. You can reach him at dlasa@pbdailynews.com.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Daily News: Palm Beach starts project to replenish South End dunes
Reporting by Diego Diaz Lasa, Palm Beach Daily News / Palm Beach Daily News
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