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For more than 30 years communities around the United States have been restoring their beaches. Although some areas in the country are relatively new to the process, others have a long history of successful beach nourishment projects. In many cases, the restoration process is so well established that beach enthusiasts are not even aware they are enjoying a restored beach! This often occurs when a community has a large seasonal population and the beach nourishment occurs when the seasonal residents are not there to see the effort that is required to restore the beach.
The American Shore & Beach Preservation Association (ASBPA) feels it is critically important to educate residents and tourists about the time, effort, and money that it takes to restore the beach so that they can lay on their beach and enjoy the sun and water. In order to help the Cities, Town’s and States educate residents and tourist, the ASBPA honors the Best Restored Beaches in America annually to help build awareness of the value of America’s restored beaches.
“In the post-Sandy era it is widely accepted that high dunes and wide beaches are one of the best defenses to minimize the impacts of erosion and flooding from severe storms,” says Tony Pratt president of ASBPA. “Many seasonal or new residents of beach communities do not realize that their beach was built and has been maintained over the years. It is important that everyone realize the time and effort that is required to maintain this critical resource.”
Continued public support for restoration is crucial and often difficult to maintain when restoration projects become successful and routine. ASBPA encourages nominations from established, as well as new, projects for the 2017Best Restored Beaches Award.
To meet submission deadlines, all nominations must be sent electronically to Bestrestoredbeach@asbpa.org by April 8, 2017. The nomination text must be in MS Word, WordPerfect, or PDF, and photos must be saved in JPEG or TIF formats. A nomination checklist is available here: 2017 Best Restored Beaches Checklist (PDF ~ 89kb). We encourage all applicants to use this form to make sure their application is complete.
Nomination packages must contain the following:
- Nominator’s contact information (name, address, phone, fax, email).
- The name and contact information for the nominee’s public relations specialist who will be coordinating with the media for press releases, etc.
- The name of the project manager, design engineer, and the dredge contractor who constructed the project.
- Project description (whether or not it is a federal project, sponsors, designers, engineers, location, length, dates and volumes of nourishment material for each nourishment episode and dates of nourishments, obstacles overcome, success of project).
- At least one professional quality color photograph of restored beach with release (tourist development councils and local resorts are good sources for photos of this quality).
- Project locator map.
- Before and after restoration photographs.
- A statement about why you consider this beach a best restored beach in the United States.
Winners will be notified in advance. ASBPA will prepare press releases to notify the media of the winner. Winners must agree to provide press releases to their local media and arrange for a representative to be present at the 2018 ASBPA Summit in Washington D.C. to accept the award.
All materials submitted will become property of the American Shore and Beach Preservation Association and will not be returned. Upon written request, a nomination from 2016 that was not chosen can be carried over to 2017.