The sound of the waves this week at Sunset Beach was drowned out by the whirring of gas-powered augers being used to drill holes in newly planted sand dunes.
The workers then dropped into the holes four species of vegetation — sea oats, bitter panicgrass, beach elder and railroad vine -- along with hydrogel packets to nourish them.
This emergency beach restoration work follows Hurricane Idalia and other storms that have devastated the shoreline. The vegetation is the next phase of the project.
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Lauren Doing, an environmental specialist with Pinellas County Ecological Services, is overseeing the planting process. She said each plant was chosen to help root and preserve the new sand dunes.
"The grasses, for example, will provide a really strong root structure underneath the surface of the dunes and will help protect it that way," Doing said. "And the vine species that we're installing will help create kind of an armor over. They can have vines 100 feet long, so they'll kind of anchor on the surface of the dunes as well."
John Bishop, Pinellas County's coastal management coordinator, said the project is important, but is also a “Band-Aid” solution.
“We’re trying to shore up, we're trying to stabilize the project, so that it can hold out until a more substantial, either federal nourishment or local nourishment, can come into to place sand here,” Bishop said.
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Work should be finished by the end of this month, Bishop said. But in the meantime, visitors are asked to stay off the dunes so the fragile vegetation can have time to take root.
