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Coastal Sand is Being Depleted, and It's Taking Our Beaches With It
Coastal Sand is Being Depleted, and It's Taking Our Beaches With It
Sep 20, 2024 7:51 AM

At a Glance

Coastal sand is being heavily mined, diminishing the world's beaches.The sand is being used for construction, products and even in the natural gas industry.

While conservationists champion the reduction of the world’s resources, one important material right at our toes has gone largely unnoticed.

Coastal sands are being heavily mined, diminishing the world’s beaches. Every year, to make a plethora of objects, such as concrete, microchips and even toothpaste, TakePart reports. Conservationists warn that the industry is damaging ecosystems and changing coastal water flows.

As a result, beaches and communities are becoming less resilient to storm surges and flooding –a poorly timed side-effect in the face of climate change and rising sea levels.

“No one ever thought we’d run out of sand,” University of California at Santa Cruz Institute of Marine Sciences director Gary Griggs told TakePart. “It’s a devastating problem, but nobody in the U.S. has a concept of it because we go to the beach and see this big wide expanse of sand.”

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Most of the mined coastal sand becomes concrete and glass, which are major components of buildings.

“An average-size house requires 200 tons of sand,” Santa Aguila Foundation general director Claire Le Guern Lytle told TakePart. “A hospital requires 3,000 tons. Every kilometer of highway requires 30,000 tons.”

As populations continue to rise, more construction is going to be needed to accommodate growing civilizations.

Between 2011 and 2013, , the Independent reported. The country used around 6.4 gigatons of cement, dwarfing the 4.4 gigatons used by the U.S. in its great period of expansion.

In the March 19, 2006, photo above, a Chinese laborer extracts sand from dirt along a river bank on the outskirts of Beijing, China. The sand is being mined to build new houses.

(Guang Niu/Getty Images)

Outside of construction, as part of the fracking extraction process, according to the Sierra Club.

“Companies use sand to keep rock fractures propped open, so that the natural gas keeps flowing,” the Sierra Club wrote in a report. “But not just any sand makes for a good proppant. Gas companies require super-fine, high-quality crystalline silica, an extremely small and hard type of sand that can withstand intense pressures. Such silica is abundant in the scenic bluffs of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois and Iowa, and this is where most mining is occurring. Fracking a single well one time can require over one million pounds of silica, and wells are often fracked several times.

“Mining, treating, and shipping frac sand have destructive effects on rural communities and natural landscapes,” the report continues. “To extract silica, mining companies level bluffs and hills, replacing them with massive holes 100 feet deep.”

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Some of the sand is mined directly from beaches, which can damage the habitats of sea turtles and birds, but much of the sand is dredged from the seafloor, TakePart also reported. Le Guern Lyle says this destroys critical breeding habitats for fish and other marine life.

"Just as you would work to keep coastal or river sand in its natural habitat, so too might it become ," the American Shore and Beach Preservation Association wrote in a release. "Construction-grade sand from inland sources might be better kept in industrial uses, both to take pressure off coastal sources and to avoid the additional cost and environmental impact that extended truck hauls of inland sand to the coast can bring."

Though coastal sand mining remains a looming threat to our beaches, the tides appear to be shifting in a more favorable direction.

According to the Sierra Club, in states where sand is being mined for fracking, communities have urged their local governments to ban the process, at least until further research is done on its health and environmental impact.

"It’s better to keep sand on the beach where the biggest thing it’s used to build is a sand castle – not hauling it away to become another skyscraper," writes the ASBPA.

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