Beaches and Dunes
Oranjestad Shoreline Oranjestad, Aruba Using an adaptive shoreline management technique to nourish a sand-scarce beach. Approximately 40 kilometers of Aruba’s roughly 80-kilometer-long coast are undeveloped, and sand is scarce. Covering 402 meters of this coastline on a recreational beach that is traversed daily by thousands and resting three kilometers north of a cruise ship terminal, the project site suffered from chronic sand loss and erosion. The sand had eroded to the point where only rock was present. During weather cycles, the sand would naturally accrete. However, this did not happen for about a year where it had in the past naturally occurred. Buildings were on the verge of being threatened, and the beach was unusable. To address conditions and add resiliency to this coastline, geosynthetic containers, manufactured by Solmax, were deployed in various groin layouts. Sand had to be carefully sourced from proximate areas where it accumulated naturally in shoals or localized areas because barging is the only other source of sand. The sand deposited between the control groins, along with the groins themselves, provided protection during larger wave events that previously washed the sand away. After deployment, and with some nourishment, sand remained in place and resilient through large storms.
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