Sephora CharlesEngineers estimate a permanent solution could take five years to begin.
Palm Beach County has renewed its drive to shore up the vanishing beach on the north end of Singer Island in Riviera Beach. But officials told residents this month it could take at least five years of study and permitting to install a long-term solution.
Dune restoration in four of the past five years is not keeping up with storm damage and erosion. This month, ocean waves crashed on the seawalls along a half-mile stretch of condos on Singer Island, even near low tide.
The county and Riviera Beach launched a $492,000 study in July to identify a solution. It is expected to be completed in July 2027, Andy Studt, the county’s coastal resources management program supervisor, said at a Riviera Beach town hall meeting on Dec. 16.
Engineers will present their findings to county commissioners for approval. It could take three more years to secure state and federal permission for the shoreline work, said Mike Stahl, Palm Beach County deputy director of environmental resources.
This is not the county’s first attempt at combating Singer Island’s erosion. In 2010, the county conducted a study and recommended structural ways to slow the erosion beyond the near-constant need to replace sand on the beaches. The county’s engineering team predicted that without action, the island would “experience repetitive beach losses to the point of having moderate to no beach,” Studt said.
He predicted that it would be increasingly difficult to replace dunes, while oceanfront property owners increasingly build seawalls.
“We could not get them to agree,” Studt said at last week’s meeting. In 2012, “the board directed us at that time to cease efforts in this long-term feasibility process until conditions have changed,” Studt said.
‘Now there’s no beach’
Mike Krampf, a Singer Island resident who attended the town hall meeting, told Stet News that he thinks it’ll take at least 10 years to repair the damage. “I think hindsight’s obviously 20/20, but they made a bad decision in 2012. Now there’s no beach,” he said.
Krampf said he can no longer walk north along the beach because the water reaches the seawalls. He wants to see the work put on a faster track to avoid losing thousands of sea turtle nests and tourism value.
The county spends tens of millions of dollars a year on beach maintenance and restoration along its 47 miles of coastline. A combination of state, federal and county bed tax money pays for it.
Studt said that as erosion has ramped up on Singer Island over the past decade, condominium owners have installed seawalls that make it more difficult to get access to the beach to do restoration work.
“We don’t fault property owners for protecting themselves” with seawalls, he said, “but it does have an effect on the system, where it’s harder for it to recover on its own, without that supply of beach and dune sand.”
Federal and state law require dune restoration to be done only when sand can be placed on a dry beach. If there is no dry beach, it can’t be restored.
The county is not planning to restore dunes on Singer Island this winter, he said.
‘Point of no return’
While long-term mitigation plans can take roughly five years to launch, officials say they are prepared. “Now we feel like we can reapproach that long-term alternative, study it, get it in front of the agencies and say, ‘Look, conditions have changed much like we said they would, but we’re at a point of no return,’” Studt said.
The Foth Cos., an engineering firm based in Green Bay, Wisconsin, is leading the Singer Island beach study. During the town hall meeting, Foth’s Steve Howard outlined multiple structural options: a T-head groin field, low-profile groins, breakwaters and segmented breakwaters. Howard said the engineering team will narrow down options based on the cost, stability and whether they can obtain a permit for them.
If the long-term plan wins approval, it will disturb Singer Island’s fragile nearshore hard-bottom reefs that support wildlife.
“If we’re going to impact 20 or 30 acres of hard bottom, we’re going to have to build 20 or 30 acres of hard bottom” somewhere else, the county’s Stahl said. “And we’ll have to do it before we build the project.”
Despite decades of erosion and restoration efforts, Riviera Beach Council Member Glen Spiritis insisted at the town meeting that the city will protect Singer Island.
Spiritis, who represents island residents, said the city has $1 million budgeted for sand, even if the county will not participate this year. And the city will look for additional money to help, he said.
“We will work with the county in areas that we think we must put sand in order to protect properties,” Spiritis said. “We’re not going to let the island just get washed away.”
