ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla — A major beach restoration project is putting sand onto an eroded beach in St. Johns County.
Now many are wondering if the sand is actually coming from the ocean floor?
The Army Corps of Engineers is placing sand on a 2.5-mile stretch of Vilano Beach. The sand is being dredged from two areas in the Intracoastal Waterway.
It's close to the fort in St. Augustine, just west of the St. Augustine Inlet.
Authorities say the dredger is huge! It's eight stories tall and longer than the wingspan of a 747.
Its job is to stir up the sand at the bottom of the Intracoastal, vacuum it up and send the sand through pipes up onto the coastline.
The dredger is currently pulling up 1.3 million cubic yards of sand. That’s enough to fill about 400 Olympic size swimming pools.
The dredging will affect people and animals.
Charter fishing captain Kevin Faver says when the dredging is done, the result will help boaters big time.
“People who don’t know that area real well, they run up on that sandbar a lot. So actually it's going to help boaters to get rid of that sandbar. I don’t know how long it's going to take to come back," Faver said.
The dredger arrived in October and will work into December. Faver says this is a great time for this project to happen because there are fewer boats in the fall and winter in that area than there are in the spring and summer.
As for fishing, the captain said the dredging is not really affecting what you reel in right now, but fishermen will flock to that spot when it’s deeper.
"Whenever you're’ a fisherman, that’s what you’re looking for, indentations, holes," Faver noted.
As for an environmental impact, Environmentalist Jane West said the eroded beach will benefit from a wider coastline.
"The alternative is to put up the seawall, what we call hard armoring and that is definitely not a good environmental solution," West said.
She added that the extra sand will "establish additional habitat for nesting sea turtles. So that’s a net gain for the environment."