I'm in Cape May, at the southern tip of New Jersey, where the US Army Corps of Engineers
have just finished rebuilding this beach.
A dredge is going offshore, and it's like a vacuum,
and it's sucking a sand-and-water mix up into the dredge.
Then it travels back toward the shore
and pumps that sand-and-water mix onto the beach.
And then bulldozers and construction equipment will shape that beach
and build that template, that's designed to reduce the damages from storms.
We're using multiple hopper dredges and miles of pipe,
we're using construction equipment, bulldozers, and excavators,
all to complete this job.
We are demobilising from the site,
so all this equipment is going to another section in Cape May,
and we'll begin dredging and beachfill operations at that location.
Miami Beach in America, the Gold Coast in Australia, the beaches of Dubai:
around the world, engineers dredge sand from offshore and pump it back onto beaches.
Not only because the tourists demand it,
but more importantly because those beaches protect the folks living next door from the
ocean.
And as sea levels rise, beach erosion is happening faster and faster.
Well, in New Jersey, there's lots of infrastructure that's at risk from storms.
Boardwalks, utilities, roads, homes, businesses.
And so this process is the best means we have to reduce storm damages
in a cost-effective and an environmentally acceptable way.
But there are other uses for sand, too:
every concrete building in the world, every skyscraper,
is basically just a load of sand, like this, stuck together with cement.
And the world is running out of it.
I know, that sounds strange, but the construction industry uses billions of tons of sand every
year.
So the obvious answer would seem to be: use sand from elsewhere, right?
We've got whole deserts and ocean floors full of the stuff.
But those sands aren't useful.
Desert and sea sands are too fine, too smooth, they don't stick together properly,
either for making concrete or for rebuilding a beach like this.
It has to be this kind of sand:
sand that's been created by moving water and waves over aeons.
This is not a renewable resource, not on any human timescale.
And if it's not there to protect the coast:
then the folks who live nearby should start getting worried.
This project was first completed in 1990,
and we've come back numerous times over the years
to renourish and pump additional sand onto the beach.
If we didn't pump this sand into this area and built an engineered system,
the communities would be at higher risk of damages
from hurricanes, nor'easters, and other storm events.
Now, running out of sand doesn't mean that we're suddenly going to be unable to build
anything.
It just means that as supply goes down, the price of construction will go up...
and there are going to be some rough market forces.
No-one's considering stripmining the Jersey shore any time soon,
but journalist Vince Beiser spent years investigating
illegal sand mining in the developing world, and brought back reports of
disappearing islands, devastated ecosystems and murderous black-market sand mafias.
Hundreds of people have been killed over sand.
Now, here, the Corps of Engineers are keeping a community safe,
some birds safe, and making sure there'll still be a beach here for tourists this summer.
But in a hundred years, who knows?
Maybe New Jersey will get a better offer for this sand.