Storm reinforces effort to replenish sand in Va. Beach

VIRGINIA BEACH

When Hazel Lawson and her husband built a tin-covered cottage in Chic's Beach 57 years ago, sprawling, grass-topped dunes and a canopy of oak trees separated their summer home from the ocean.

Now, her stone patio teeters on the edge of the beach, less than 50 feet from the water.

Hurricanes Floyd (1999) and Isabel (2003) each stole more than 30 feet of sand, and last week's nor'easter took away at least 25 additional feet, said Lawson's daughter and next-door neighbor, Sarah Houck. One more storm, and Houck fears her childhood home will also be lost.

If another storm comes, she'll also face the heartbreaking decision of whether to move Lawson, who's now 99, a widow and blind, from the cottage. She lives by herself in the Lauderdale Avenue home, which is now covered in pale-yellow siding instead of tin.

"We don't want to take her out of the house," Houck said. "She knows where everything is in the house, and to put her in a different environment would be very difficult for her at her age."

The solution: beach replenishment, she said. For more than 10 years, some residents of Chic's Beach have wanted more sand brought in to buffer their homes from the ocean, but property easements, funding and other hurdles have stood in the way.

But now the need is dire, Houck said. "If we don't get beach replenishment, then the cottage is going to go with the next storm."

She's working with Stephen Michaels, who owns the property occupied by Alexander's on the Bay, to move beach replenishment forward. They met with the city's water resources engineer, Phill Roehrs, on Monday. Now they're trying to obtain easements from the community's roughly 85 beachfront property owners. So far, they said, about 25 have agreed to sign the documents, which would guarantee public access to the beach and allow the city to consider using public funds to place sand there.

Once they get easements from at least 60 percent of property owners, they'll present a proposal to the City Council, Michaels said. Part of Alexander's restaurant collapsed in the storm, along with most of the parking lot.

"If we had 50 feet of sand out here, we wouldn't have had the damage," he said. "This will really open people's eyes that sand replenishment is an ongoing thing if you live on the water."

But a beach replenishment project could be several years away, Roehrs said. It took 10 years to start the project currently dumping sand on Cape Henry's beaches, he said.

On Wednesday, Roehrs surveyed Chic's Beach and the beaches at Cape Henry and Ocean Park alongside officials from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. It doesn't appear that they'll qualify for federal help, he said, although the city believes they should.

Roehrs said it's difficult to measure how much sand the beaches lost but called the dune erosion significant.

New dunes could come sooner for Chic's Beach if the City Council orders an emergency replenishment project, Roehrs said. But he said it's more likely that things will progress more slowly, like they did for Cape Henry.

That's not soon enough, Houck said. Her mother has terminal cancer and macular degeneration, an eye disorder. She began hospice care from her Chic's Beach cottage Wednesday.

For now, two watercolors on Lawson's entry way wall preserve her backyard the way it used to look, when there were still dunes and a rock garden outside her back door.

When last week's storm rolled away, it took the rock garden with it. Her husband built it before he died 20 years ago. Now instead of stone ledges, magnolia trees and a canopy of oaks, there's mostly just sand.

Houck hasn't had the heart to tell her mother her favorite place is gone.

"It's all gone," Houck said. "That was sad to see Dad's work go away. It was just a really sad day."

Kathy Adams, (757) 222-5155, kathy.adams@pilotonline.com