Pam Schwartz and I decided to get away to Daytona Beach for a day. Parking at the end of a street was surprisingly easy. A quick walk over some dunes left us on the beach where we set up the umbrella since I am a vampire needing eternal shade. Once set up we walked down the beach towards what looked like a huge fountain.
The beach ended with a sign and workmen warning “Danger and Keep Out!” The fountain was part of a $20-million-plus effort to restore protective berms along Flagler
County’s coastline, one of the longest and most multifaceted projects in
the county’s history. Work crews dumped more than 750,000 tons of sand to patch up Flagler’s
battered dune line, which was devastated by hurricanes Matthew and Irma
in 2016 and 2017.
Sand was being pumped through huge pipes being moved from one area and mixed with sea water to make a slurry and then pumped out like a geyser onto the new beaches being built and expanded. As the sand filled slurry poured out, tractors quickly moved up and down the beach moving the new sand into place. A few months later the same beach had a huge thick boa constrictor of a pipe running down the beach as the sand was being pumped further south. Sand was built up in certain areas so beach goers had bridges to walk over the thick pipe which was at least 5 feet in diameter.