A long-awaited Hunting Island beach project began this week. Here’s what you’ll see
Visitors at Hunting Island State Park may notice heavy equipment on the beaches over the next couple of months, the latest piece in a major effort to restore the hurricane-ravaged park.
A large pipe from the ocean began pumping 1.2 million cubic yards of sand onto the beaches Tuesday, Hunting Island park manager J.W. Weatherford said.
Under “normal conditions,” he said, the pumping will continue 24 hours a day for the next 6 to 8 weeks. The amount of sand to be added will be the most since 1980, when 1.4 million cubic yards were used, The Island Packet previously reported.
The project will be done in segments, and different portions of the beach will be blocked off to the public while sand is being pumped into that area. Weatherford said only 1,000 feet of the beach will be blocked off at a time.
“We’re not going to be closing off any main accesses or anything like that,” he said. “For this to be the middle of our beach, the way they’re doing it is the easiest way for our visitors to not be hindered at all. Most people that come out here will not even notice.”
He said when the pumping gets closer to the end of South Beach, rangers may have to close down South Beach road, but they would try to do that on a non-busy day.
The pumping started in the middle of the beach at the lighthouse and will move south to the last groin on South Beach, then north toward the campground. Two miles of Hunting Island’s 5-mile-long stretch will be affected.
Sand replenishment is the latest phase in a larger, long-planned project to restore the park, including its beaches and iconic lighthouse, after Hurricane Matthew decimated it in 2016 and Tropical Storm Irma followed a year later.
In October, fallen trees known as the “boneyard” that formed a picturesque stretch along the island’s North Beach were cleared and poled at the edge of the forest to make way for the new sand and to remove hazards to those walking and swimming, park officials previously said. Two miles of driftwood boneyard are still accessible on the island’s South Beach.
Millions of dollars in projects at Hunting Island over the next two years will include repaving roads with the help of federal disaster assistance, renovating the historic lighthouse overlooking North Beach, reopening the pier, and remodeling the lighthouse gift shop.
“This is the time of the year when we do state park spring cleaning,” Weatherford said. “When you have over a million visitors a year, we take this slower time to put some love into our facilities that we can’t do as much in the summer, spring, and fall.”
Hunting Island is one of the state’s most popular parks, with more than 1 million visitors a year. It’s also topped several magazines’ “must-visit” lists, such as Coastal Living’s “50 Secret Places to Visit Now.”
