Beach Renourishment
Project at Hilton Head Island
This cluster of giant
earth-movers pictured below is working its way down the Hilton Head
shoreline at 300 yards per day, "renourishing" the beach (ie,
replacing the several feet of sand that's been washed away over the
years). Right now they're at the Shipyard
Plantation.
The tractors are all
constantly scurrying about madly, beeping and roaring, working
24/7. Some push muck into weirs to form basins,
others dig out, then level, the basins themselves; still others
with enormous jaws haul and join the giant lengths of pipe through
which sand slurry is pumped in from offshore. The dredge pumping
the slurry is several miles out at sea, its pump reputedly possessing a
million horsepower. Supervising the operation,
rolling back and forth on sand and through water, is a 50-foot high
tripod on wheels. Think "War of the Worlds".
CLICK
HERE to see a video that presents the background and technology of
the operation. (It is, by the way, one that extends up and down
the entire East Coast in one form or another.)
CLICK ON A THUMBNAIL BELOW TO
SEE ITS FULL-SIZED IMAGE
(you can then scroll from one full-sized image to the next).
