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Boardwalk (Finally!) for Myrtle Beach?


digital_sandlapper

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I just read on www.mbpavilion.com that there's a mile-long boardwalk planned for the oceanfront of Myrtle Beach! :yahoo:

What do you Grand Stranders know about this? How come there's nothing on here about it? Is it true or rumor?

Hope it is going to happen. It is LOOOOONG overdue, and will be a BOON for our little city by the sea. Imagine that, New Urbanism principles in Myrtle Beach! :shok:

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That's interesting. There is a short board walk there now just north of the pavillion. According to my Dad who is from Myrtle Beach, there was a real boardwalk in Myrtle Beach at that time that went down much of the beach around the Pavillion. Erosion, and hotel building took it away however.

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  • 2 months later...

Ironically, the building of the concrete board walk was a disaster to the beach itself. By the middle 1970s, the beach had disappeared due to erosion as the removal of the natural sand dunes causes the beach to fail as the sand gets washed out into the ocean. At high tide it became nothing but a sea wall and a 1970s photo of that view would has shown a board walk against the water. That problem persists until today as the beach that is there now is an artificial beach. It is maintained by barges that come out there in the winter which mechanically pump sand back onto the beach that has been washed out. This is done at great expense using state and federal money.

It is very illegal these days to destroy a sand dune, and if police catch anyone picking the sea oats that help to maintain them, it's a pretty expensive fine. (as it should be)

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Ironically, the building of the concrete board walk was a disaster to the beach itself. By the middle 1970s, the beach had disappeared due to erosion as the removal of the natural sand dunes causes the beach to fail as the sand gets washed out into the ocean. At high tide it became nothing but a sea wall and a 1970s photo of that view would has shown a board walk against the water. That problem persists until today as the beach that is there now is an artificial beach. It is maintained by barges that come out there in the winter which mechanically pump sand back onto the beach that has been washed out. This is done at great expense using state and federal money.

It is very illegal these days to destroy a sand dune, and if police catch anyone picking the sea oats that help to maintain them, it's a pretty expensive fine. (as it should be)

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Beach erosion is part of a natural process. The cities we build on the coasts are acutally the obstruction. But the real estate is too valuable to not restore the beaches. Thats why you see different standards for Myrtle Beach when compared to Fripp Island or some of the other undeveloped barrier islands on the coast, which are usually left alone.

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It is a natural process but if the sand dunes are left intact it goes through a cycle. The beach will naturally retreat and then get rebuilt back up on its own. It's done this over thousands of years. However if the sand dunes are removed it does something to the wave action that causes the sand to be washed into the ocean and it does not come back. So where they built hotels and boardwalks where they took down the sand dunes and put up concrete walls, the beach erodes away.

There are some marvelous beaches to the south of Myrtle Beach that are wide and sandy and do not require re-nourishment as they are still natural. But most of Myrtle Beach, having been developed before they knew these facts, now requires the renourishment process. Most of the east cost is not renourished as it is simply far too expensive.

So in the winter at places like myrtle and virginia beach they have to build the beach back up? I didnt know that but its interesting. something i didnt know. Too bad it erodes so easily. The ocean is a very powerful thing.
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