Andy Coburn Quotations

I think beach nourishment is used to help sell housing projects and protect the towns' tax base. People have this idea of the Outer Banks as a wild, wind-swept destination and an artificial beach will take away that lure which in turn could hurt the economy.

What people don't understand is that the market for development on the beach will never go away and even if that front row of houses is lost due to erosion or storms, the row behind it will act as a new frontline or a new row will always be built. The demand for more houses will never cease.

Once a beach is nourished, it has to be constantly maintained and re-nourished at a rate of anywhere from every two to five years resulting in a huge expense for the county or government.

If you widen a beach, then yes, you will reduce impact from certain storms. But take a big hurricane, something like Katrina, and there's no artificial beach we know of that would've prevented that kind of destruction. That did nothing.