SC becomes a symbol of beach widening in Brazil – 01/07/2024 – Daily Life

A symbol of beach widening in Brazil, Santa Catarina accounts for a third of such projects in the country and even brought sand to the shore that was not subject to construction. The excess contribution “swallowed” part of a pier in the area and became the target of criticism from those who are against this type of intervention on the coast.

In Florianópolis, Canajurê beach expanded its strip with sand that came from Canasvieiras, where the municipality expanded in 2020.

“It’s not making the use of the pier unfeasible, but it could make it unfeasible if it increases again. We don’t know what will happen. Before, the volume of sand had already increased and decreased. But no one remembers it getting to that point”, said Luiz Fernando Beltrão, commodore of the Santa Catarina Yacht Club.

The municipal secretary of Infrastructure, Rafael Hane, states that the transfer of sand from one beach to another was already foreseen, but not in the volume that occurred. Any change to the coast changes the sedimentary balance, as the movement of sand along the coast due to waves and sea currents is called.

“The project already predicted migration, but all mathematical modeling has to be refined with what happens in practice. We couldn’t think about controlling migration [de sedimentos], because more erosion could occur. Now we are going to carry out monitoring, to know what actions to take with the leftover sand and reduce the speed of sand transfer,” he said.

Santa Catarina has 8 of the 23 waterfront intervention projects identified by Sheet carried out since 2018 or planned to occur. The state began studies to expand the coastline at the end of the 1990s. Florianópolis also built a landfill on Praia dos Ingleses and plans another in Jurerê, also neighboring Canajurê.

Oceanographer Ricardo Haponiuk, coordinator of Anama (National Association of Municipal Environmental Bodies), highlights a race by cities on the north coast of the state to mitigate effects possibly caused by neighbors.

“Itajaí made the jetties [espécie de muro dentro da água] to fix the mouth of the Itajaí-açu river. This jetty began to cause erosion in Navegantes. Navigators then changed the shape of the jetty to try to hold a little more sand. But there is a beach in the north of Navegantes that no longer has sand and there is already a fattening project there,” he said.

“If you go up, there is Balneário Piçarras, which has already built groynes, is fattening and is now licensing a new extension. Barra Velha, neighboring Piçarras, also has practically no beach. And, further up, Itapoá, which also has a fattening project .”

The “boom” of works in the state even divided researchers from UFSC (Federal University of Santa Catarina).

A technical note from the UFSC Ecoando Sustainability Program criticizes the way in which the Santa Catarina government licenses beach widening. Projects with a fattening capacity of up to 500 thousand m³ are considered medium-sized, which exempts them from the need for environmental impact studies.

All those executed in Florianópolis remained close to this limit. The widening of Praia dos Ingleses, at the beginning of 2023, for example, used 499.6 thousand m³ of sand. Only simplified environmental studies were required of them, which, according to the document, “have a limited scope and only verify the area of ​​direct influence of the project.”

In a statement, the SC Environment Institute stated that it evaluates the impact along the coastline in licensing. “IMA has been seeking to implement measures to carry out integrated management across beach sectors in the same physiographic unit, in order to assess impacts more broadly.”

Oceanographer Alberto Klein, also from UFSC, defends carrying out the works using technical criteria. “Fortunately, in most of the country, we are moving away from using rocks and concrete (first move) and doing beach nourishment, trying to replicate the environment.”

He states that the main reason for the concentration of works of this type in the state was economic, in addition to coastal erosion. “Space is needed on the beaches, as the state has a strong economy in coastal tourism. The calculation is simple: no beach, no tourists.”

Klein states that widening the beach is not enough. A monitoring and planning program for sand replenishment is also necessary. “They must be in the budget because, like all works, they require maintenance. They work for the planned time.”

The R$66 million for the installation of 2.7 million m³ of sand on the central beach of Balneário Camboriú was paid for by local businesspeople, with financing from Banco do Brasil. Balneário Piçarras created a fund for beach maintenance in 2001, which receives a fixed percentage of IPTU and ITBI.

Haponiuk argues that the cost should be borne by real estate developments that intensify the occupation of the coast and cause the need for landfill. “These entrepreneurs need the buildings to be intact and have a beach for them to sell their product. So why don’t they pay for it?”

Professor Paulo Pagliosa, from the Center for Marine Studies at UFSC, states that the technique becomes useless if the occupation of the coast continues to interfere with dunes, restingas and other spaces often destroyed by urban occupation.

Studies show that dunes serve as a store of sediment for beaches, while sandbanks help retain them during extreme events.

“Wideening the beach is not working with nature. It is with tourism and the market. Working with nature would be restoring the beach environment. What people do all over the world are uninterrupted landfills. We are in a time of climate crisis and the The sea level is already rising. Building a beach embankment, which is already something ephemeral, in an extreme situation will last much less”, says Pagliosa.

Haponiuk shares Pagliosa’s opinion. He participated in the development of the project to expand Itapoá beach (SC), where he was environment secretary. If executed, it will be the largest landfill made in the country in recent years, with 12 million m³ of sand and around R$480 million . He tried to convince the mayor to give up on the project.

“With the project, we had the value of the work. I then made an estimate. I took the first block of the 26 km of our beach and made an estimate of how much all the lots on that first block would cost. It was, I don’t know , R$ 2 billion, R$ 1.5 billion. I told the mayor: ‘Look, if I were you, I would chase this R$ 1.5 billion and vacate the first block. Because this project worth R$ 0, 5 billion you will have to make two, three times in the next 20, 30 years’.”

---

SERIES SHOWS THE EFFECT OF WORKS ON BRAZILIAN BEACHES

The Altered Beaches series heard from experts and authorities involved in the dozens of works carried out in recent years on the country’s coast. The reports show the reasons that led to the investments, the failures in the projects and possible future consequences with the change in the Brazilian coast.

The texts will also highlight the local impacts of the interventions and how many failures are repeated in different municipalities in the country, which do not have regional or national integration to combat coastal erosion.