Army Corps pumping sand to renourish Tybee beach

Tybee Island beach and pier. (US Army Corps of Engineers)

The Army Corps of Engineers is giving Tybee Island's beach a fresh layer of sand - $11 million worth.

It's the first time since 2000 that Georgia's largest public beach has been renourished with new sand to repair erosion. Tybee Island needs it badly. Portions of the beach had eroded so much
that they vanished underwater at high tide.

The Army Corps began pumping sand from the ocean floor last week and spreading it onto the beach. About 120,000 dump truck loads of sand are needed overall. The work is scheduled to continue into January.

Officials waited to start the project until after the summer tourist season was over and rare sea turtles had finished nesting on Tybee Island.

(The Associated Press)

Click here for more GPB News coverage about Tybee Island.

Feds to Fix Tybee Island Erosion

The federal government is slated to spend more than $6.3 million dollars to fix erosion on Tybee Island beaches.

The damage was caused primarily by the dredging.in the nearly Savannah River shipping channel that leads into the city's harbor.

The Savannah harbor is one of the largest in the country, and few argue that the Army Corps of Engineers should suddenly stop clearing the channel that guides container ships to port. But critics say the domino-effect spending, which is ultimately directed by Congress, shows the dangers of trying to battle forces of nature.

The money to restore Tybee's beaches was in a massive spending bill that Congress sent to President Bush last week.

Click here for more GPB News coverage about Tybee Island and Savannah.

(The Associated Press)

Fighting litter on Tybee Island

Tybee Island is stepping up efforts to reduce litter on the beach. Trash bag dispensers have been installed at public dune crossovers on the island. The Tybee Beautification Association received a grant from Keep Georgia Beautiful and extra help from local sponsors to install the 27 trash bag dispensers. Previously there were only free trash bags for cigarette butts.

Tybee Sand Not Turtle-Friendly

Researchers say Tybee Island's freshly renourished beach still needs work to ensure that federally-protected loggerhead sea turtles will nest there. The federal government spent $11 million pumping fresh sand onto Georgia's largest public beach last fall. But a turtle expert with the state Department of Natural Resources says the sand is too compact for finicky sea turtles to lay their eggs. The DNR's Mark Dodd says much of the beach needs to be tilled to make the sand soft enough for turtles before the nesting season starts in May. Tybee Island Mayor Jason Buelterman says the city will be happy to foot the bill - an estimated $10,000 or more - because officials often cited nesting turtles when lobbying Congress for the beach renourishment funds.

(Associated Press)

Tybee getting beach renourishment

Tybee Island’s beach is getting an 11-million dollar injection of new sand. The project headed by the Army Corps of Engineers is the first time since 2000 that the state’s largest public beach has been renourished with new sand to repair erosion. Tybee’s beach has been in dire need of help, with portions so eroded it has disappeared underwater during high tide. The Army Corps began the project last week by pumping sand from the ocean floor. Work will be complete sometime in January after around 120,000 truck loads of sand have been spread.

Eroded Tybee beaches get a fix

Restoration of Tybee Island's badly eroded beaches will begin Oct. 1. The 90-day project will extend from Tybee's north jetty to another jetty on the south beach. A pipeline will route sand from about a mile and a half off the south end of the island. The pipeline will import a total 1.2 million cubic yards of sand.

Tybee Island Beach Fine for Sea Turtle Nesting

It seems the federally protected loggerhead sea turtles will find plenty of nesting habitat on Tybee Island’s freshly re-nourished beach after all.

The federal government spent $11 million pumping fresh sand onto Georgia's largest public beach last fall.

And late last month researchers were concerned the sand was too compact for the finicky sea turtles to lay their eggs. But now, the Department of Natural Resources turtle expert Mark Dodd says he’s reinterpreted the data to find the compact sand is mostly on the tide-line where the turtles don’t nest anyway. And where they do dig… 85-90 percent of that shore is nest-friendly.

Their nesting season begins early May and ends in October.

State announces land conservation grants

Two Georgia cities are getting special state grants for land conservation.

Tybee Island is getting a $206,000 Georgia Land Conservation Grant. Chickamauga is getting a $365,000 grant and an $875,000 low-interest land conservation loan.

Tybee Island will use the money to buy 14 acres on the north end of the island that are mostly salt marsh wetlands and maritime stand forest habitats. Chickamauga will use the money to protect the Gordon Lee mansion and grounds that date to the 1840’s.

Famous Horses Grace Georgia Parades

The world famous Budweiser Clydesdales are spending several days in Georgia to participate in two parades on Georgia's coast - the Tybee Island Irish Heritage Parade on Saturday and the Savannah St. Patrick's Day Parade on Tuesday. The horses are taking up temporary residence at J.F Gregory Park in Richmond Hill, where the public can see the horses daily from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. Savannah is one of 300 cities the five traveling hitches visit annually. A single Clydesdale hitch horse will consume as much as 25 quarts of feed, 60 pounds of hay and 30 gallons of water a day.

(Associated Press)

Hanna draws Georgia surfers

Choppy waters churned up by Tropical Storm Hanna lured surfers to Tybee Island today. 30-mile-per-hour wind gusts whipped waves up to five feet off the barrier island on the Georgia coast. Lifeguards were out in force monitoring the handful of surfers. Some surfers said they will wait to see if Hanna brings even bigger waves.

'Big rain storm' marches west

Bands of heavy rain continued to march west across South Georgia this afternoon, as Tropical Storm Faye turned out to be the "big rain storm" that forecasters expected. After two days of waiting with overcast skies and only spotty rain on Wednesday and Thursday, Friday's worst in the Savannah area brought spotty power outages, localized flooding, some traffic tie-ups and downed tree limbs.

Possible tornadoes spotted this morning by National Weather Service doppler radar in counties north of Savannah, including Effingham, Bulloch, Jenkins and Screven Counties, did not result in calls to emergency services, those services reported this afternoon. Roads were clear and "all quiet here" was the going phrase among emergency services personnel contacted by GPB.

Today, residents in the Savannah area awoke to no power. As many as 9,000 people were without power at the height of an early morning outage, but crews restored power to most before noon. Tybee Island and Savannah's Southside were the most effected. Georgia Power brought in extra crews, but didn't have to use them, because local crews were sufficient, company officials said.

Georgia's southern coast appears to be getting the heaviest rain. There were reports of some minor street flooding in St. Mary's, some traffic tie-ups on Interstate-95 and a lot of disruption in Jacksonville, where officials attributed several traffic fatalities to the storm. Officials in three South Georgia counties, Camden, Glynn and McIntosh, and officials at Valdosta city schools cancelled classes today for those safety reasons.

But even in South Georgia, the storm, so far, has been a bigger wait than anything. Lowndes County spokesman Paige Dukes said, "People in South Georgia are prepared for storms. They've been through this before. But, this is the longest we've had to wait for a storm." Fay made landfall in the Florida Keys on August 15.

Massive bill includes money for beach, waterway

Coastal-area residents are getting more federal funds than local officials expected from a massive spending bill that cleared Congress this week.

U-S Congressman Jack Kingston’s office was expecting $2.5 million for beach renourishment on Tybee Island. In a bill that passed the U-S House and Senate Tuesday, the figure was over $6 million.

The money will be used to get sand to the island’s eroding beach, a matter of business concern on the tourism-dependent island.

Likewise, the state usually gets a quarter-million for the Intra-Coastal Waterway. The final figure coming out of Washington is almost 4 times that much.

That money will be for dredging Georgia’s portion of the ever-silting Maine-to-Florida water route, a highway for boaters and commercial interests on the coast.

Taxpayers for Common Sense, a D-C based anti-pork barrel group, says there are about 9-thousand similar earmarks totaling 7-billion-dollars in the half-trillion-dollar bill.

Beaches improve, but problems still reported

A national report on water quality shows Georgia beaches improving, even while health officials issue no-swim advisories. The National Resources Defense Council found beaches nationwide to be at record levels for unsafe swimming.

One bright spot, however, is Georgia. In the past year, the state's most popular beaches saw a marked decrease in water samples exceeding state standards for illness-causing bacteria.

The good news is tempered by ongoing problems at a few beaches, such as King's Ferry on the Ogeechee River, where health officials have posted a permanent health advisory.

Health officials this week also issued a no-swim warning for a portion of the popular Tybee Island beach. Health officials say, warm weather, jellyfish and a good rain last week might have contributed to high bacteria levels at one of the beach's five testing sites on Monday.

Atlantic storm off the coast of Savannah

Three weeks before the Atlantic hurricane season officially starts, there is a first named storm of the season--Andrea. It’s churning about 135 miles southeast of Savannah right now, but forecasters think it won’t have much movement, and will fizzle-out over the next few days near the coast. Yesterday at Tybee Island, 5-foot waves and 26 mile per hour wind gusts were recorded.

It’s not expected there will be much relief from this storm in trying to help douse the wildfires in southeast Georgia and now parts of Florida.

Team Time Trials Added to '08 Tour de Georgia

Braselton -- The Tour de Georgia is coming up April 21^st and this year there are some “firsts” for a race that has become the premier cycling event in North America.

In addition to starting on Tybee Island for the first time, two other new features have been added.

Today, event coordinators announced this year’s race will include team time trials at a new venue. This will be the first time in 15 years there’s been team time trials in a cycling events in North America.

The team trials will be held during Stage Four of the race at the Road Atlanta race track in Braselton.

Tour event director Chris Aronhalt said one reason for the team trials is because most European cycling events have them and the Tour de Georgia has become a world-class race.

He said they chose Road Atlanta for the team trials because of its location.

“As we looked at the route, geographically, this area is where we wanted to host the team time trials,” Aronhalt explained. “Honestly, Road Atlanta is a great fit for it with the 2.5 mile track we have here. It just all kind of came together,” he concluded.

Aronhalt said they’re not sure if the team time trials will become a regular feature for future Tours de Georgia. He said that decision will depend on the layout of future courses.

Over the past five years, more than 2.8 million spectators have traveled to Georgia to watch the event resulting in an economic impact totaling $148 million dollars.

Tour de Georgia is sanctioned by the Union Cycliste Internationale and is part of the USA Cycling Professional Tour USA, Inc. making it one of the top stage races for elite athletes around the world.

'08 Tour de Georgia gets 5 new stops

Next year’s Tour de Georgia includes some new cities on the race course, but comes at the expense of other major stops from previous years.

The cycling event will have five new cities in the week-long race next April. Tybee Island will host the start, and is followed by newcomers Statesboro, Washington, Braselton, and Suwanee. Returning host cities include Atlanta, Augusta, and Brasstown Bald.

Cities left out for 2008 include Macon and Rome. Event director Chris Aronhalt says crafting the new route only had to do with letting residents in other communities share the Tour experience .

"It has nothing at all to do with the support. In fact the race would have loved to go back to those communities like Macon and Rome".

Tour organizers also had to be mindful of the route’s mileage, and incorporating mountain and coastal stages.

Aronhalt says the race expects to be financially healthy, with new headline sponsors to be announced at the start of the year.

2008 List of State’s 10 ‘Places in Peril’

The Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation released today its 2008 list of 10 Places in Peril in the state.

Sites on the list include: the Meriwether County Jail in Greenville; the A.L. Miller Senior High School for Girls in Macon; the Old Clinton Historic District in Gray; the Spencer House in Columbus; the UGA Marine Institute and Administration Complex on Sapelo Island; the Trinity C.M.E. Church in Augusta; the Adam-Strain Building in Darien; the Sunbury Historic Colonial Town Site; the Cockspur Island Lighthouse in Tybee Island; and, The Castle in Atlanta.

“This is the Trust’s third annual Places in Peril list,” said Greg Paxton, president and CEO of the Trust. “The locations chosen are not only in peril themselves, but represent a group of similar threatened historic places and represent the broad range of historic resources throughout Georgia. We must never forget that once a historic place is gone, it’s gone forever,” Paxton said.

The Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation is the country’s largest statewide, nonprofit preservation organization with more than 8,000 members, according to a statement released by the organization on Wednesday.