Preservation Challenges, Plans and Tactics

Beach erosion occurs when waves and currents from storms wash away sand from the beach, making the beach narrower and lower in elevation. Beach erosion also threatens our roads, infrastructure, homes and businesses located near the ocean. This is a concern for coastal communities, such as Fort Lauderdale, that rely on tourism as a major source of revenue and on the beach as a major contributor to quality of life.

The City of Fort Lauderdale is taking proactive measures by engaging in a variety of preservation plans and tactics.

On a small scale, we do things like planting sea oats to hold sand in place and promote the formation of sand dunes.  On a larger scale, we work with regional and state authorities to look at beach erosion up and down the coast and to plan with neighboring communities.

Approximately 3.54 miles of our City’s critically eroded beach will be renourished with 550,000 cubic yards of sand over the course of two years. Careful consideration for nesting sea turtles means that the beach-fill activity is limited to the six months outside of the turtle nesting season which takes place during the months of March through October.  The beach renourishment project will also consist of dune build up on parts of Fort Lauderdale beach in order to defend against coastal flooding and erosion.

We will be loading more information about vital beach projects in the coming months. Bookmark this page and check back. In the meantime, you can visit webpages to learn about post-Hurricane Sandy improvements to our wave wall and to A1A, and also about community development plans for the area. Finally, you learn about the history of our beautiful beach and all it has to offer on the Fort Lauderdale Beach park page.