Call For Nominations: The American Shore and Beach Preservation Association’s Best Restored Beaches Awards Due April 5

ASBPA is seeking nominations for the Best Restored Beaches Award to recognize beach renourishment projects.  This award honors the Best Restored Beaches in America annually to help build awareness of the value of America’s restored beaches.  The award-winning projects on America’s open shoreline and on the Great Lakes’ shorelines could include:

• Beach and shoreline renourishment project on open coastlines
• Dune projects
• Coastal resiliency projects with a sandy beach or dune component
• Inlet management and regional sediment management (RSM) projects including beach placement
• Beach and shoreline projects on open coastlines with structures that enhance the performance of beach renourishment projects

The intensity of the storms that have been hammering our coasts have been increasing.  It has been proven that high dunes and wide beaches are  the best defenses to minimize the impacts of erosion and flooding from severe storms.  “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” says Tony Pratt, President of ASBPA.

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 2019 Best Restored Beaches Award.

In preparing hour nomination you should provide a narrative that includes as a minimum the following:

• The project objective
• Was the project successful
• Project designer/engineer
• Contractor that constructed the project
• Who were the collaborative partners
• The project sponsors
• Was this project funded by State/Local government, Federal, Private, or a combination
• Adversity that was overcome
• Describe the public outreach that was conducted both before and during the project
• Project permitting hurdles that were over come
• Cubic yards placed on the beach for this project
• Location of the project and project length (for this and previous projects)
• Number and dates of previous beach nourishments and cubic yards placed on the beach for these previous beach nourishments

The Committee will evaluate the nomination based on your responses to these questions.  Please feel free to expand on or the describe in more depth what efforts were required.

To meet submission deadlines, all nominations must be sent electronically to Bestrestoredbeach@asbpa.org by April 5, 2019.  The nomination text must be in MS Word or PDF, and photos must be saved in JPEG or TIF formats. A nomination checklist is available here:  2019 Best Restored Beaches Checklist (PDF ~ 100kb). We encourage all applicants to use this form to make sure their application is complete.

Nomination packages must contain the following:

1. The information requested above
2. Nominator’s contact information (name, address, phone, email).
3. The name and contact information for the nominee’s public relations specialist who will be coordinating with the media for press releases, etc.
4. The name of the project manager, design engineer, and the dredge contractor who constructed the project.
5. At least one professional quality color photograph (preferably horizontal) of restored beach with release (tourist development councils and local resorts are good sources for photos of this quality).
6. Project locator map.
7. Before and after restoration photographs (preferably horizontal).
8. A statement about why you consider this beach a best restored beach in the United States. It is important to let the Committee know that you love your beach and that the restoration project was a benefit to:

• The Community,
• Storm damage protection,
• Habitat restoration,
• Recreation, or other

9. If available, please include beach nourishment data for your current project, and historic beach nourishments, to include volume (cubic yards), cost, and length of shoreline restored. Your project will be added to our online geodatabase: https://gim2.aptim.com/ASBPANationwideRenourishment/

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 2020 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 2018 that was not chosen can be carried over to 2019.