I'm in Cape May, at the southern tip of New
Jersey, where the US Army Corps of Engineers have just finished rebuilding this beach. A dredge is going offshore, and it's like
a vacuum, and it's sucking a sand-and-water mix up into
the dredge. Then it travels back toward the shore and pumps that sand-and-water mix onto the
beach. And then bulldozers and construction equipment
will shape that beach and build that template, that's designed to
reduce the damages from storms. We're using multiple hopper dredges and miles
of pipe, we're using construction equipment, bulldozers,
and excavators, all to complete this job. We are demobilising from the site, so all this equipment is going to another
section in Cape May, and we'll begin dredging and beachfill operations
at that location. Miami Beach in America, the Gold Coast in
Australia, the beaches of Dubai: around the world, engineers dredge sand from
offshore and pump it back onto beaches. Not only because the tourists demand it, but more importantly because those beaches
protect the folks living next door from the ocean. And as sea levels rise, beach erosion is happening
faster and faster. Well, in New Jersey, there's lots of infrastructure
that's at risk from storms. Boardwalks, utilities, roads, homes, businesses. And so this process is the best means we have
to reduce storm damages in a cost-effective and an environmentally
acceptable way. But there are other uses for sand, too: every concrete building in the world, every
skyscraper, is basically just a load of sand, like this,
stuck together with cement. And the world is running out of it. I know, that sounds strange, but the construction
industry uses billions of tons of sand every year. So the obvious answer would seem to be: use
sand from elsewhere, right? We've got whole deserts and ocean floors full
of the stuff. But those sands aren't useful. Desert and sea sands are too fine, too smooth,
they don't stick together properly, either for making concrete or for rebuilding
a beach like this. It has to be this kind of sand: sand that's been created by moving water and
waves over aeons. This is not a renewable resource, not on any
human timescale. And if it's not there to protect the coast: then the folks who live nearby should start
getting worried. This project was first completed in 1990, and we've come back numerous times over the
years to renourish and pump additional sand onto
the beach. If we didn't pump this sand into this area
and built an engineered system, the communities would be at higher risk of
damages from hurricanes, nor'easters, and other storm
events. Now, running out of sand doesn't mean that
we're suddenly going to be unable to build anything. It just means that as supply goes down, the
price of construction will go up... and there are going to be some rough market
forces. No-one's considering stripmining the Jersey
shore any time soon, but journalist Vince Beiser spent years investigating illegal sand mining in the developing world,
and brought back reports of disappearing islands, devastated ecosystems
and murderous black-market sand mafias. Hundreds of people have been killed over sand. Now, here, the Corps of Engineers are keeping
a community safe, some birds safe, and making sure there'll
still be a beach here for tourists this summer. But in a hundred years, who knows? Maybe New Jersey will get a better offer for
this sand.
"Hundreds of people have been killed over sand"
At this point, is there anything over which hundreds of people haven't been killed??
Cape May! That's where I am from. They have not just finished dredging that beach. They have been dredging that beach for the past 15 years and it will never stop.
The natural course of the Earth is the sand will move south and eventually fill in the Delaware Bay. It has been a slow losing battle to prevent that forever.
EDIT: Also, parts of Cape May have already been lost. What used to be "South Cape May" a few decades ago is underwater.
Good. I don't like sand. It's coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere
So we're only running out of a specific type of sand for a specific purpose, but not sand in general?
Mars keeps sounding better and better.
What does Tom Scott do anyways? He is always in these interesting places and all we get is a 3min video once a week. Is this his main content, does he have a day job?
I live in Florida and the beaches here have been eroding at an alarming rate! We have been battling this for years, just last year we dumped tens of thousands of truckloads of sand on the shoreline in an attempt to restore it. The dumped sand is not a solution.
I wonder if there will be a scientific breakthrough to use sea and desert sand for construction.
How about people stop building shit right next to the fucking ocean?