Our view: New beach nourishment plan makes best of challenging situation

Yes, a major beach nourishment project like the one to begin soon on Hilton Head Island can be a major inconvenience.

We wish the dredgers for the $20.7 million project were already grinding away and preparing to leave by Memorial Day. At one point, that was the plan for the island’s first major beach repair work since 2006. The timeline has changed twice since then. Bad weather and dreding projects running late in other locations have been cited by the contractor.

But let’s face it: We do not live in a perfect world. And there never will be a perfect time for a project of this magnitude. It involves placing more than 2 million cubic yards of sand on four different segments of the island’s beaches totaling more than six miles.

Last fall’s high tides and stiff winds stripped some 160,000 cubic yards of sand off the beaches, adding to the sense that the show must go on without further delay.

We believe the Town of Hilton Head Island’s new schedule makes the best of a challenging situation.

The largest portion of the project, where the most people will be impacted, is a four- to five-mile stretch of oceanfront running from the Folly south into Sea Pines. Dredging is not to take place on any of that stretch until late August. Much of it will be in October.

That means none of the most populated areas will be touched during the peak tourist season of June 15 to Aug. 15.

Areas to be done in June are on Port Royal Sound. An area on the southern end of Sea Pines is to be done from late July to mid-August. That is not ideal.

The latest timeline gets an important job done in the most reasonable fashion possible, although we’d like to see the contractor be told to hold off on any of the main oceanfront beach until after Labor Day.

The schedule won’t be ideal for nesting sea turtles, either. But volunteers stand ready to work overnight where sand is being pumped onshore to protect the turtles, and to relocate nests, a routine practice.

Bear in mind that the town went through a two-year process to get environmental permits for this job. The permits allow specific windows for the work to take place in order to protect as best as possible the summer nesting of sea turtles and the winter arrival of migrating shorebirds. The permits would not allow the project to be done completely in the winter.

Also bear in mind that only 1,000 feet of beach will be off limits at any given time, and that area will change every few days. Not all of the beach will be impacted all of the time, as some seem to think.

Local tourism leaders should help each other move visitors around, if need be.

And they certainly must grasp, and help explain, the big picture. Hilton Head is the envy of the oceanfront world in having an erosion abatement plan that is funded entirely locally. The town’s beach preservation fee — a 2 percent tax on overnight lodging enacted in 1993 — produced $6 million last year. Without that, complaints about the inconveniences of beach nourishment could easily be complaints about houses and hotels crumbling into the ocean.

The town’s website has information on the nourishment project front and center. And it offers a subscription service to get daily updates when the project starts. We can do this.

This story was originally published April 1, 2016 at 8:00 PM with the headline "Our view: New beach nourishment plan makes best of challenging situation."