Overview

Our beaches are eroding, sinking, washing out right under our houses, hotels, bridges; vacation dreamlands become nightmare scenes of futile revetments, fills, groins, what have you-all thrown up in a frantic defense against the natural system. The romantic desire to live on the seashore is in doomed conflict with an age-old pattern of beach migration. Yet it need not be so. Conservationist Wallace Kaufman teams up with marine geologist Orrin H. Pilkey Jr., in an evaluation of America's beaches from coast to coast, giving sound advice on how to judge a safe beach development from a dangerous one and how to live at the shore sensibly and safely.

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9780822305743

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Reviews

[T]he definitive work describing the dynamics of barrier islands--and the futility of trying to stabilize them. <br>--Richard Hart, Independent Weekly

[T]he definitive work describing the dynamics of barrier islands--and the futility of trying to stabilize them. --Richard Hart, Independent Weekly

Coastal beaches are not stable, explain conservationist Kaufman and geologist Pilkey, but exist in a state of dynamic equilibrium maintained by the unceasing interaction among: migrating materials; wind, waves, and tides; the changing shape of the whole beach, above and under water; and the sea level, which is rising relentlessly due to melting of the polar ice caps. Engineering attempts to stabilize shorelines almost inevitably compound the damage and ultimately cost more than the property being protected; nor is disaster unpredictable. Yet in all our coastal areas reality is ignored, erosion hastened by development, and the taxpayers called upon to pay the cost of disaster aid to those who have built their homes and hotels on eroding cliffs, in hurricanes' paths, or, one way or another, on shifting sands. Kaufman and Pilkey examine the particular natural systems of barrier islands, the Florida keys, California cliffs and coves, and other specific beach areas, and they document the disastrous results of developers' greed, American stubbornness, and dumb faith in technology. They advocate a public policy that allows for the natural migration of beaches and a similar flexibility regarding property lines, and end with advice on site selection and building plans for potential homeowners. Kaufman and Pilkey's careful attention to the complicated interaction of natural factors at work gives this a firmer base than Anne Simon's more rousing and action-oriented The Thin Edge (1978); but they bring to the subject no less concern and conviction. (Kirkus Reviews)

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