Sea Walls have been around for Centuries and were popular in ancient times. Sea Walls today protect cities and towns on coastlines and keep oceans from damaging businesses from flooding along with saving lives. They are massive structures that are constructed to resist the energy built up from the Ocean. How Do Seawalls Work?
A Seawall effectively acts as a form of coastal defense by redirecting the energy of a wave made by a storm surge back to the ocean water, protecting the coastline from flooding and reducing erosion of the beachfront.
A seawall is a passive structure, which protects the coast against erosion and flooding. Seawalls are often used at locations off exposed city fronts, where good protection is needed and where space is scarce. In the coming years, Seawalls will be used on coastlines worldwide in defense against rising sea levels from Global Warming.
How Do Seawalls Work
The primary purpose of a seawall is to protect residential shoreline coastal areas from upland erosion and surge flooding. A seawall acts as an important coastal defense against these types of events. When a wave crashes onto the shore, the seawall redirects a lot of that wave energy back to the water, protecting the coastline and reducing erosion of the beachfront. It also protects residential areas from flooding. There are many advantages to using retaining walls along coastal beaches and inland shorelines.
The environment can be protected by keeping the soil and sand from being eroded and destroyed. There are many businesses that thrive along the coastline that couldn’t exist without the help of a Seawall and the protection it provides.
Seawalls work to prevent sand removal and dune erosion along their lengths to ensure the natural beauty of the coastline and prevent the alternatives that are prevalent like coastal storm surges and when Hurricanes and Tsunamis rear their ugly heads. Other advantages of Seawalls are:
- They reassure the public
- Relatively Cheap They use cheap materials like Rocks
- They have a long life span.
Studies suggest that flooding from rising sea levels will prove more costly than building barriers to protect coastlines is a coastal defense against beaches and development and coastal flooding brought on by Climate Change.
The storms on the East Coast alone in the last few decades have created a need for Seawalls and other protective construction projects near the shoreline that prevent disasters and huge Insurance rates that businesses and homeowners just can’t afford to pay. Insurance Companies predict Seawalls will be built all around the world.
In previous years, lots of low-lying communities have been allowed to build on properties that were well under sea level. Add the fact that ocean levels have been rising for decades because of Global Warming and the risk is obvious.
The high insurance rates are already unbearable in places where people like me are from. A bad storm can create flooding in the coastal areas of New Jersey or New York. Then after the cleanup, comes the higher rates are tacked on to premiums before your house is even livable. That’s just New Jersey. This is a growing global problem with projections saying that 5% of the world’s population lives in coastal regions that are below sea levels.
The Marine Impacts of Seawalls
A well-constructed Sea Wall does the job and has great positive impacts with some negative factors attached to it too. Mainly, because the wave action’s energy tends to spread out from the area that it’s built around to the neighboring areas with no protective structures. Quickly eroding public property, construction, and reducing the sand supply to their beaches.
Vertical Seawalls can cause increased damage to the development of adjacent areas of beaches that do not have seawalls. This so-called “flanking erosion” takes place at the ends of seawalls. Wave energy can be reflected from a seawall sideways along the shore, causing coastal bluffs without protection to erode faster. Some other disadvantages of a Seawall are:
- They can make it harder to enter the beach
- Interferes with sediment flow along the coast
- Environmentally ugly
- Recurved sea walls cause more significant erosion at the base of the wall
Another negative factor in building a Seawall is the maintenance cost. Even well-constructed Seawalls have a maintenance cost. Some maintenance costs will include:
- If no weep holes are installed in the seawall, groundwater, and rain percolating through the soil will build up pressure behind it, pushing over the wall.
- Scouring at the toe of the wall may tip the wall if there is not any toe protection.
- Wave energy deflects down the wall, eventually destroying the ends of the wall.
- Storms and high tides carrying debris can severely damage the seawall.
Seawalls, according to scientists have affected ecosystems along the coastline creating losses to habitats and changes in biodiversity. When natural beaches were compared to beaches with man-made structures there were large differences in the Ecology of both systems.
Harden shorelines (that are developed areas) are beaches that have Bulkheads or Seawalls built to protect against Erosion and losses in sand or land, Some areas cause damage somewhere else along with the beachfront areas.
Seawall Construction Methods
Although there are several different ways of constructing a seawall, there are three main methods used.
- the first is thin, interlocking sheet piles that were driven deep into the ground.
- The second method of seawall construction is individual piles used to support an above-ground structure.
- The third method is a massive gravity construction resting on the shore’s bottom or embedded slightly in it. This construction is supported by its own weight rather than by piling
A Large Seawall is built from concrete masonry or sheet piles and runs parallel to the shore at the transition between the beach and the mainland or dune in order to protect the inland area from wave action. They usually are massive structures that can resist storm surges for long periods of time.
The height of a vertical seawall will at least cover the difference between the beach level and the mainland, though commonly seawalls are built higher and can be straight or curved walls to protect the land against wave overtopping. Seawalls are also used to stabilize eroding cliffs and protect coastal road development and settlements.
The crest of the wall often extends into a stone area part that could be used for a road, promenade, or parking area. A seawall creates a distinct separation between the beach and the mainland. Seawalls are often found in cases of narrow or steep beaches, where a typical breakwater is too large.
A jetty platform on wooden or concrete piles is built into the sea to protect a navigation channel and it allows for the berthing of ships. It usually does not have a shore protective function which instead breakwaters do. Parallel jetties are frequently built to delimit a navigation channel.
Jetties will affect the longshore transport of sediment and ecological processes. Jetties can be constructed with concrete, stone, timber, or steel. Jetties are not usually adaptation measures but may be connected with seawalls or other hard coastal defense structures.
Has It Ever Snowed in Florida?
Yes, but its rare, for snowfall to occur in Florida, the polar jet stream has to move towards the south and into the Gulf of Mexico through Texas, move with a cold front across Southern Florida, and then curve towards the Northeast before combining with cooling air in the frontal clouds .……………………………………………………………………………………. Read more
Costs of Seawalls
The life expectancy of these types of Seawalls is between 35 years without major repairs. The average price of Seawall construction in the United States is $2.6 million dollars per/meter
The northern area of the city was destroyed during Superstorm Sandy and this project was used to revitalize that area and will finally open back up since it was closed downed 2012. Massive stones were shipped in from a Pennsylvania stone quarry to be used on the ocean side of the Seawall.
What is a Flash Flood Warning?
A Flash flood warning is an alert issued by the National Weather Service that indicates that a flash flood that can take minutes to hours to develop is occurring or will occur imminently and is usually issued when there are strong weather radar echoes for an area that is prone to flash flooding ……………………………………………………………………….. Read more
How Long Do Seawalls Work
Large Seawalls and other man-made structures that provide protection against the damaging effects of the waves of the ocean are called man-made landscaping which is mostly caused by urbanization and infrastructure expansion. Nowadays lots of structures are being built along the coast because of rising sea levels that are being brought on by Global Warming. More and more people live by the sea or have businesses there.
Dykes, Rock fills Seawalls are used to hold back nature to prevent the danger to populations on the coastline so the building can go on. Faced with erosion and rising sea levels sustainable development is needed to keep Mother Nature reclaiming coastlines that used to belong to her.
New types of Seawalls are expected to last up to 100 years depending on the materials used to make them or 50 years without major repairs done to them. Researchers believe that every country around the world within 90 years, will be building structures much like Seawalls to defend itself from the rising tides and wave heights caused by warming temperatures because the cost of flooding will be more expensive than the construction of seawalls that do prevent sand removal and dune erosion along their lengths.
A Seawall works like a coastal defense, designed to minimize the eroding impact of heavy waves and rising sea levels that are attributed to the science of climate change and the energy of water.
How Is a Rain Tarp Applied to a Baseball Field When it Rains?
- Infield Baseball Tarps are applied from a tarp roller
- Unrolled onto the field by a more experienced Field Cover Crew on the dominant Windward side
- Unfolded-keeping the edges, they are pulling out close to the ground preventing the wind from getting underneath
- Covering the Infield & securing the corners ..…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… Read more
JimGalloway Author/Editor
References: Seawalls May be Cheaper than Rising Waters
ENR-Atlantic City Fights Storm Surge With 1,740 ft of New Seawall
