ST. PETE BEACH, Fla. — Pinellas County Coastal Management estimates Hurricane Helene displaced up to one million cubic yards of sand from the county's beaches.
That is more than 300 Olympic-sized pools worth of sand.
Dr. John Bishop is the coastal management coordinator for Pinellas County.
"This was definitely a landscape-changing event," Bishop said. "This is basically an erasing of the last 30 years of projects and there are some places on Sunset Beach that haven’t been this eroded since the 60s or 70s when this project began."
Meanwhile, the county is filing an emergency permit with the Army Corps of Engineers to approve renourishment work in these federally controlled waters.
It's work that’s already happening in Pass-A-Grille because of an existing permit.
"It could take a long time to get a federal permit. I’d like it to happen in a few months, and we’re hopeful, but it could realistically take up to a year," Bishop said.
The work is critically important, Bishop said, for storm protection for home and business owners, tourism and our wildlife.
"It’ll take a long time to get us back to where we were at, and I don’t think the beach will ever look 100% like it did before," Bishop said.
In Pinellas County, public works is not only responsible for the beach clean-up and renourishment work but also, of course, for debris collection, an immediate need for all these coastal communities.
A county spokesperson said once debris clean-up is complete, they’ll be turning their full focus to the beaches as their next phase of recovery.