NEW SMYRNA BEACH, Fla. – A five-month dredging project to restore sand along New Smyrna Beach is finally complete, and crews are now working to remove equipment from the shoreline.
During the day, heavy machinery is lifting and unscrewing large dredging pipes from the beach. Overnight and in the early morning hours, a separate crew drags the pipes out to sea and loads them onto a barge for removal. The county hopes to have all equipment off the beach by Memorial Day weekend.
Residents say they’re relieved the project is wrapping up.
“It is good to renourish it and bring all that sand back in but at the same time, pulling up to the beach and seeing all that pipe, is just something you don’t want to see,” said Justin, a Volusia County resident.
Since January, crews have been dredging sand from a nearby area and pumping it along four miles of New Smyrna Beach, stretching from north of Flagler Avenue south to near Bethune Beach. Once the pipes are removed, the county will replant vegetation in the dunes.
Jessica Fentress, the county’s coastal director, says major hurricanes over the last five years eroded most of the sand, leaving high tides crashing into seawalls and weakening the dunes that protect the coastline.
“We now have a beautiful berm that stays dry during high tide,” Fentress said.
She says the sand serves a purpose beyond storm protection.
“Sand is sacrificial. The reason we place the sand on the beach is not only as a buffer from storm events on our shoreline but it also provides critical nesting habitats for our sea turtles and resting shore birds,” Fentress said.
Fentress says crews ran out of sand before completing the southern end of New Smyrna Beach but plan to return to finish the work.
“We are looking at options for an additional truck haul project south of where we finished the berm but we wouldn’t commit to that until worked out the financials and none of that would begin until after November 1st which is when sea turtle nesting closes,” Fentress said.
A separate sand renourishment project in Ponce Inlet is already scheduled to begin in 2027.