A major beach replenishment project in two Ocean County towns is on hold potentially for the duration of the summer.

That's while the Army Corps of Engineers and the state environmental department resolve a contract issue.

Shore towns rely on replenishment programs to keep beach erosion under control.

Shore towns protected and tourism flowing.

The process widens the beach by dumping sand dredged from offshore to reinforce dunes.

But it's a never ending and expensive task.

New Jersey's spent more than $2.6 billion on these projects over the last century.

The bulk of it from more recent years, despite accounting for just 1% of the nation's shoreline.

State officials say the return on investment is well worth it.

Andy Coburn tracks this data in his role leading Western Carolina University's program for the study of developed shorelines.

And he joins me now.

Andy, what struck me the most when looking at your data and research is the fact that New Jersey accounts for a fifth of the dollars spent nationwide for beach nourishment.

And yet every year we see laws here at the state level and nationally being passed to pump more and more into this.

What has your research shown you about the sheer cost Well, the cost of putting sand on beaches is primarily determined by the distance over which the sand was travel.

So all efforts are typically expended to try and find beach quality sand or beach compatible sand as close to the beach that's being nourished as as possible.

And so, as you can imagine, the better quality sand that's going to offer nourishment at the surface taken first.

And then over time, you have to go far farther away, which means that the cost will go up.

Also, we are starting to see that there are a lot more locations around the country that are vying for sand.

And there is a limited number of entities up there.

They're capable of nourishing beaches that the scale that the Army Corps of Engineers are for most customers want.

So costs are going up as a result of both of those circumstances, as well as just the cost of fuel A number of other factors that determining that determine how much a project or nourishment episode is going to cost.

So basically, costs are going up every year.

And then if you add in other factors like climate change, like sea level rise, more extreme weather and weather incidents, happening, heavy rainfall with storms, what factor does that add to what you expect the cost to balloon to really I mean and are you anticipating that?

Does the research bear that out?

It does.

We saw a tremendous increase in the cost of nourishment in 2004, 2005, primarily in Florida.

When Florida got hit by I don't remember the number of hurricanes, but it ended up going past the letter Z into the Greek alphabet.

And as a result of that, that particularly harsh year the number of nursing episodes in Florence skyrocketed, which then translated across the country to an increase in nourishment as well.

And so in terms of demand, as us saying earlier, that's primarily where we see the price increase.

And now with global warming and climate change, still rise, we don't know how that will impact the cost of nourishment, but we are very certain that it will increase the cost of nourishment probably pretty significantly over the next several decades.

When you talk about preservation, at least here in New Jersey, we're sure tourism brings in a whole lot of dollars for the state.

You know, folks talk about shoreline armoring as opposed to this nourishment.

There's also the fact that, you know, we've had for years groups say that this, you know, really is disparate in terms of who is helped by doing these nourishment projects and at the cost of these natural habitats.

I'm wondering how you weigh the two considering what the cost is going to be and the fact that our beaches bring in a lot of money, you know, revenue for New Jersey Right.

The first thing that I think it's important for everybody to understand is that beach nourishment, which is a term that was coined by proponents of putting sand on beach because it's a very positive term.

Really, nourishment is it is intended to not protect the beach.

It's intended to protect what is behind the beach.

And I think that's really, really important that everybody understands that.

And there are a lot of arguments that people make is they want the beach is very important economically.

People come and they can spend money.

So we need to put the beach out there.

And so that is an argument that we have heard repeatedly.

But the case is if we didn't have static economic development behind beaches, beaches, windmill beaches, definitely want to move, they need to move, especially during times still on the rise as we're doing right now.

And that prevents from moving because of the static economic development behind it.

So therefore, the alternative or some of the tool to appeal to our nourishment, which is considered soft stabilization technique because it's relatively soft and soft.

And the other option would be hard structures or stabilization, as mentioned before, which would consist of sea walls.

That means even groins, jetties, and those kinds of things.

And we know those are extremely detrimental to the health and the vitality of natural systems that rely on beaches and also on the floor that rely on them as well.

So for economic purposes, sometimes it is worth nourishing beaches, but most of the time it really isn't.

Andy Coburn with Western Carolina University, thank you so much for your research and for your time.

Appreciate talking to you.

Well, thank you very much.