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Dealing with coastal erosion is a rising hurdle in Florida as stronger storms and higher seas regularly eat away at our ocean beaches and our confidence that our homes won't one day be catastrophically undermined.
And although it doesn't draw as much attention, erosion along the banks of the Indian River Lagoon also threatens homes and infrastructure, a problem exacerbated by accelerating sea-level rise.
Ironically, seawalls and other decades-old attempts to curb erosion have increased risk to some properties, especially those that surround all the makeshift walls.
After each hurricane, cities in Brevard and statewide often opt for large rocks, concrete seawalls and other "gray" structures, instead of mangroves, shellfish and other "green" ways to secure shorelines.
But it's the "living shorelines," combinations of manmade wave breaks and native vegetation, that offer much better protection, experts say.
More: Brevard to bulk up Max Brewer Brevard plans to guard Max Brewer causeway spot with sand, seagrass, concrete and clams
"It's quick and easy," Ray Walton, a retired science teacher and state health inspector who lives along the lagoon next to Castaways Point Park in Palm Bay, said of seawalls and the like.
Instead, he planted mangroves, spartina and other native plants years ago that built up his shoreline, naturally. Nearby neighbors who opted for rock walls watched each storm gut their yards.
Such shoreline disparities are not unique. Guarding the lagoon banks in Brevard got off to a "rocky" start, especially during the Space Race. Decades later, homeowners and government at all levels continue to rely on rocks, walls and other "hard" ways of protecting shorelines. That's despite mounting evidence that "living shorelines" have a better track record along the lagoon banks.
Replacing the 'old guard'
Now, the tide is turning toward bringing estuaries like the lagoon back to their roots. Cities are beginning to remove what's left of the "old guard" rock and concrete seawalls as those fail in hurricanes, and now are trying to mimic with mangroves and other plants what nature did for millennia.
The concept is gradually gaining ground as biologists can point to more examples of how nature's ways are cheaper, longer-lasting and better for the environment.
Last month, Brevard County launched a $4.2 million project to guard A. Max Brewer Memorial Parkway in Titusville with huge concrete pyramid-shaped wave breaks, baby clams, seagrass plantings and fill sand.
Climate change making erosion worse
Among the reasons risks to the Space Coast's critical coastal infrastructure keep mounting and "living shorelines" as a possible solution are trending:
The rate of sea-level rise — echoed in the lagoon and other Florida estuaries — has tripled in the past two decades from the 100-year trend, federal data shows.
At least 1 in 5 miles of Brevard's roads (excluding minor and local roads) are impacted by shoreline erosion, a 2023 regional transportation study found. That means those roads either washed out in the past or there's the threat they will in the near future, because they go through a 200-foot buffer from the lagoon, Banana River or the Atlantic Ocean.
Almost two-thirds of the lagoon's shoreline in Brevard has "hard-armoring" and the third remaining was altered by fill or removal of wetland vegetation, harming fish and wildlife habitat, research shows.
Florida will likely lose 1 million properties by 2100, or 10% of the state's current residential properties, if it fails to curb greenhouse gasses, a 2023 study by Cornell University and Florida State University found. Today, these properties are worth $351 billion, equivalent to $5 billion in yearly property tax revenues.
"These issues are popping up everywhere," said Gary Zarillo, a coastal geologist at Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne. "In general, there are going to be instances where you have to put in hard structure."
But Brevard is leading the charge toward "softer," more natural shoreline solutions. That's because the lagoon is where more than $7.6 billion in economic output is at stake, as well as another $1 billion in annualized real estate value added for property along or near the lagoon, which spans 40% of Florida's east coast.
Ais Indians raised the lagoon's first walls
Decades of septic tanks seeping sewage, sewer plant discharges, homeowners overfertilizing, and development increasing runoff fueled toxic algae blooms that wiped out most of the lagoon's seagrass by 2011. As a result, fish, manatees and other marine life plummeted. A record 1,100 manatees died in 2021, most in the lagoon from starvation.
The last line of defense for the lagoon's water quality is along these mostly walled fringes. Native plants near the lagoon uptake the excess nitrogen and phosphorus that can fuel those toxic algae blooms.
Whether out of convenience, or to buffer the village from the next storm, prehistoric Ais Indians steepened the lagoon's shorelines with oyster and clam shell middens they left behind thousands of years ago. The mounds were their trash landfills. Much of those shell mounds became fodder for modern-day road beds that paved the way for Central Florida's growth.
Then developers, for waterfront views, stripped out native vegetation and filled the lagoon shoreline with sand, rocks and seawalls. Those didn't stand the test of time like mangroves, spartina and shellfish in keeping shores intact.
Sea-level rise accelerated the process. According to federal data, since 2006 the yearly rate of rise was about 1 centimeter per year in the lagoon region, three times faster than the 100-year trend, Zarillo, of Florida Tech, notes. The same accelerating rate applies to the lagoon.
An 'arms race' against the waves
As with the beachside, the rush to protect property and critical infrastructure during the Space Race became an "arms race" along the lagoon: If one property installed a seawall, waves would scour and erode properties on either side.
So developers tore out fish-friendly mangroves to make way for concrete, rock and metal walls that fronted what would become aquatic dead zones. But also like beachside, the water line eventually met those walls, scouring away nearby sand and seagrass. Some homeowners decades ago even used tires or huge chunks of left-over concrete from construction to dampen lagoon waves, some of which remains in the lagoon.
Now, 64% of the lagoon's shoreline in Brevard has "hard-armoring" and 35% of the remaining shoreline is "altered by addition of fill or removal of wetland vegetation," a 2017 study by University of Central Florida found. The study also ranked 21% of the county's shoreline as potentially suitable for a "living shoreline" and 43% as potentially suitable "if a medium to low profile wave break is included in the design."
What's a 'living shoreline?'
In 2012, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission identified shoreline hardening as a major threat to coastal habitats and cited living shoreline methods as a way to reverse that threat.
A "living shoreline" uses strategic placement of plants, stone, sand and other structural organic materials such as oyster reefs or biologs (log-shaped structures of organic fibers such as coconut) for erosion control and restoring natural shoreline habitat, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
But often, homeowners and cities either can't or won't risk waiting for roots to establish before the next big storm. And after governors sign post-hurricane emergency orders, the rocks and permits start rolling.
Rocks, fabric matting, plastic and concrete create a sterile shoreline, devoid of life, biologists say. And the ongoing lagoon-erosion fallout of using those tactics for decades in Brevard has had severe consequences in recent years: collapsed segments of U.S.1, the lagoon infringing on Cape Canaveral's sewer plant, and ever-eroding causeways.
Brevard cracks down on seawalls
Brevard saw the ecological writing on the seawalls years ago, creating county codes that prohibit new seawalls along unincorporated stretches of the lagoon, unless immediately between two existing bulkheads. Rock revetments are required, immediately waterward of the seawall, to create aquatic habitat.
Removing native plants for shoreline hardening isn't typically allowed, but property owners in unincorporated Brevard can apply for a permit to repair existing hardened structures or propose new rock revetments or other shoreline stabilization. Stormwater management is required as part of the permitting to reduce lagoon pollution.
But after storms temporarily wipe out vegetation along some lagoon shorelines, owners and local governments often get emergency — sometimes leading to permanent — permits for rock revetments and other 'hardened' structures to protect their property or municipal infrastructure.
Mangroves 'be damned' — or walled
Mangroves like other trees are a significant countermeasure to climate change. They store more carbon per unit area than any plant in the world, but research shows humans have deforested about 30% of mangroves since 1980. In Brevard, 80% of mangroves have vanished since the 1950s.
Mangrove leaves drop into the water and shed nutrients that sustain the tiny crabs and other marine life that fish eat.
There were attempts in Brevard, some from local entrepreneurs, to grow them back.
Some tried for years to plant mangroves along the county's causeways. They tucked the plants into PVC pipes that would blunt the waves long enough to give the trees a chance to grow.
It didn't work. The Florida Department of Environmental Protection backed the concept but between 1995 and 2008, of 11,719 mangroves planted using PVC encasem*nts, only 679 survived.
Lagoon House sets shoreline example
The debate over how best to keep the lagoon banks intact had its most notable, local test case at the Marine Resources Council's environmental learning center at Ais Lookout Point in Palm Bay, called the Lagoon House.
In the months preceding the 2004 hurricanes, the nonprofit threatened to walk away from running the center when the city installed a granite and plastic grid structure to make the shore stable.
The rock wall didn't last long. The rock slope collapsed during Hurricane Frances. Then Hurricane Jeanne ate farther underneath a boardwalk at the bluff's edge. But in 2005, MRC got its way and partnered with the city to install a living shoreline with mangroves and other native plants that's lasted for more than 20 years.
Recently, MRC further bulked up its shoreline with so-called Reef Arches, which use a patent-pending technology to blunt wave energy with "clean concrete" structures to protect shores and help native plants reestablish along shorelines.
"We call it like a hybrid shoreline," said Mara Skadden, MRC's director of science.
MRC hopes to do more living shorelines with Palm Bay and to get a state grant to build a 7,000-foot living shoreline in Malabar, along Rocky Point Road, which gets damaged every few years after storms. "Having to pay for this road repair every two years is very costly," Skadden said.
So are seawalls and other expensive "gray" ways of trying to do what greener shores do best. The costs are both financial and ecological.
But the seedlings that grew Ray Walton's backyard mangrove barrier washed up for free.
So he sees all the rocks and concrete walls as wasteful stopgaps.
"It's not a long-term solution," Walton said. "It's just a such a short-sighted way of doing things."
Learn about Florida Living Shorelines at: floridalivingshorelines.com
This article originally appeared on Florida Today: Seawalls claim most of Indian River Lagoon's vital ecological fringe
