Sand is both wonderful and annoying, but trust me when I say our beaches are better with it. Over the last decades, sand has been disappearing from our local beaches, shrinking the actual size of the beach that is not covered with water, eroding and undermining the structural integrity of the cliffs, and making our sandy beaches into tempermental rocky beaches that can only be accessed at low tide.

Over the years there have been some attempts to add sand to the beaches, bringing in big hoses to squirt large amounts of sand in very specific areas of local beaches. That effort seemed to fall in the category of too little to do much good. But recently a huge sand restoration project began on one of our local beaches. Orchestrated by the US Army Corps of Engineers, more than 700,000 cubic yards of sand was dredged from the lagoon, transported by boat, and then deposited via an enormous metal pipeline onto the beach–and according to a recent news article, doubled the size of the beach (for the price of $16 million).

Parts of beach have been closed over the last couple of months while enormous construction equipment pushed sand around, seemingly fighting against wave energy and the tides. The extra large boat became a familiar sight anchored off the coastline, and sand began to pile up.

A week ago we noticed that most of the beach was open, so we walked the new and improved beach. But the sand was deep and the angle of the beach was severe. Walking felt both hard and painful! How long would it take for the beach to get back to feeling walkable?

But on Friday when we walked again, the beach had changed again. Big trucks were flattening parts of the beach and spreading the sand further. The area near the water was much less steep and much more walkable.

Today as we walked again, I could really noticed how much larger the beach was. In early January, even at low tide we walked relatively close to the crumbling cliffs (with multi-million dollar homes perched precariously at the top). Today we walked a good distance from the cliffs and the water seems like it is not reaching them, even at high tide.

The most dramatic illustration for me was noticing the permanent lifeguard tower that I often photograph. Here’s a photo I took shortly before the sand restoration project began. Notice the rocks below the land the tower is perched on. Those rocks were always covered by water at high tide and were meant to protect the tower.

Today I realized that the water is quite far…and that the sand fully covers those rocks. I had to climb up quite a distance of sand to get where I could take this photo.

This sand restoration is supposed to last for a decade and be repeated then if funds are available. They just started this project at another local beach last week…and boy does that beach need it! We’ve been avoiding that beach lately because it is so rocky!

So, even though the sand can be annoying, clinging to every part of my body and depositing itself in my house despite my most careful efforts to mitigate it, I love it on the beach. The beach is definitely changed and I’m sure that not everybody is happy about that…but here’s hoping it helps with the severe erosion problems and gives us a bit more walking beach when the tides are not super low.