In Daytona Beach, erosion and wind from storms cause damage to seawalls and coastline buildings.
Photo by Teia Williams.
A timeshare located in Daytona Beach, Catalina Beach Club, had to close down last August due to repairs for over a year. The seawall and sections of the building were both damaged.
Photo by Teia Williams.
The seawall is attached to another seawall that is in the lot next to the property. The empty lot’s seawall eroded, pushing the property’s seawall out towards the beach along with it. The Catalina Beach Club resort’s lounge area is attached to the seawall, including the pool.
The seawall erosion caused the pools pipes that were connected to it to break, causing the pool to drain. Other impacts on the building were caused by rain and wind damage. Most of the floors of the building were needed to be repaired.
“If it is damaged by an act of nature then we have to repair it,” Head of the Maintenance Department, Edward Smith says. “There have been some layoffs. People who come in on Saturdays to clean, they are all out of work.”
The people who were working at these establishments now are at risk of losing their jobs due to the environmental impacts.
Places to stay closing down can impact tourism as well, giving less options for visitors in the summer season.
In the second week of February 2024, multiple beach walkovers and vehicle on-ramps had to close due to erosion on the beaches. The erosion was caused by a storm that hit the east coast. The sand that was put in place to prevent high tide from reaching properties had been washed away, leaving a wide range of the beach vulnerable to erosion.
Seawalls are a type of protection for daily use, though storms can still have impact. During a high enough tide, seawalls can cause damage to the beaches.
Daytona State courses such as Oceanography and Environmental Science, provide lessons about erosion and seawalls on the coasts of barrier islands.
In one textbook, Investigating Oceanography, it explains a type of environmental impact seawalls can have. “Seawalls can reflect waves to combine with incoming waves and cause higher, more damaging waves at the seawall or at some other place along the shore,” author Keith Sverdrup writes.
Another process that can cause seawalls to get destroyed is a scour. A scour occurs when the water is at a high enough tide that hits the wall. The water and sediments churn, and the sediment then gets swept further back to the sea and away from the wall, which makes the seawall break and collapse.
Seawalls offer protection for a certain period of time until they are needed to be repaired. In both Oceanography and Environmental courses, there are assignments that influence students to find the best result for coastline erosion. Insuch assignments, the end result has been the use of groins, a type of jetty.
“Groins, rock or timber structures, are placed perpendicular to the beach to trap sand carried in the longshore transport,” author Sverdrup continues. “Sand is deposited on the up-current side of the groins, and sand is lost from the beach on the down current side.”
Ponce Inlet, just south of Daytona Beach, has one jetty. Groins are not located in DSC’s nearest beaches. These structures still cannot fully prevent erosion due to the one side of the groin still losing sand.
Erosion is a constant battle Florida barrier islands have faced as well as every other coastline in America. Businesses are impacted as well as the atmosphere around them.