MARTIN COUNTY — Joan Bausch stood in the pavilion on Bathtub Reef Beach this week and discussed the future of the eroded beach. The Sewall’s Point resident values the natural beauty of the mangroves and the worm rock reef, and she wants to protect the popular beach from harm.

“My preference would be to let this beach heal and to not allow too many people,” Bausch said Monday.

Bausch is one of a group of citizens the county has started consulting to formulate a plan for the beach as it prepares to rehabilitate the well-loved park, which has been closed since early last month.

While the county is accepting bids to restore the park’s crucial sand dune, the head of the Parks and Recreation department held his first meeting with a citizen advisory board to create a new management plan for the beach.

Martin County is planning to start rebuilding the popular park’s crucial sand dune, a project expected to cost at least $1.2 million, in January.

The county closed the beach Oct. 6, around the same time it closed the beach last year, because erosion had exposed tree stumps and chunks of concrete on the beach.

Richard Blankenship, director of the county parks and recreation department, was asked by county commissioners in September to create a vision for the park’s future that would detail when the park would be open and how to prevent deterioration.

He met for the first time Monday with a group of citizens to get their input on the park, and the group of less than 10 came up with a wide variety of suggestions, from posting more signs to reducing parking spaces, but all agreed that lessening user impact on the beach in some way would be ideal.

The decimated sand dune to be rebuilt is near the beach’s northern parking lot, said Kathy FitzPatrick, the county’s coastal engineer, and bidding will wrap up at the end of the month.

The county completed a two-year permitting application process to rebuild the dune, damaged along with the northern section of parking lot by storms in 2007, and is now awaiting permits.

The worm rock reef from which the beach takes its name prevents the county from completing a full beach replenishment, but the dune reconstruction will at least contribute to stability and vegetation.

Once the project is bid out, the county will pump sand from the shoals of the St. Lucie River Inlet west of the beach to build the sand dune. There is no guarantee that the dune will not be affected by the frequent shifting of sand that takes place in the park. The process is expected to take several weeks.

The Martin County has already been considering a number of options for healing the park. One of the costliest would be purchasing a private property on the north side of the beach and moving bathrooms that washed away there. But the cost makes the choice unrealistic, officials said.

Sharon Massaglia, a Jensen Beach resident, said people need to be informed of their effect on the beach and reef in order to protect the park, where she would bring her son when he was young. She said there could even be some type of instructional video, like the ones shown at Sea World exhibits, about the park.

Sam Mahoney, who worked as a lifeguard at Bathtub Beach and elsewhere before lifeguards were taken off-duty there, said that parking could be lessened to protect the beach’s stability. He also was concerned about visitors taking too many fish from the reef.

Blankenship told the group that he planned to go to the county commission with a plan in December and invited the group to think of a plan and meet again Nov. 16.
By Alex Tiegen, TCPalm.com

Tags: bathtub reef beach, costs, county commission, erosion, repair, residents, solutions

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