"Designer Beaches" — Beach Nourishment Engineering

The wide, sandy beach stretched out before Megan and Kate. It was covered with people for as far as they could see. Their weeklong family vacation had just begun and they had just raced to the beach as quickly as possible. The beach the youngsters looked at was spectacular. For the next week, this would be their kingdom to "lay out" in their new bikinis, ride waves on their boogie boards, build sandcastles with their cousins, and go on long walks to check out the boys. In short, it was paradise. And it was a nourished beach. The girls didn't know they were looking at a nourished beach and they didn't care. But without the beach nourishment, the girls would have been looking at a much different scene. They would have had little or no space to lay their towels or build their sandcastles. Even if they found a place, it would have been in the shadow of a seawall. Without the beach nourishment, they could not have walked along the beach except at low tide because of the water hitting the walls. The beach, as they knew it and loved it, had been saved by beach nourishment.