Miami Beach is running out of sand.

CNN
"The Christian Science Monitor"
May 16 2007.

MIAMI BEACH, Fla. -

Troublesome, because it's a community that draws its very life from the stuff.

The city and its famous strip, South Beach, thrive off the sunbathers who come from across the globe to spread their towels and lie upon the coarse granules laden with seashell – generating $4.2 billion annually from tourism. The sand also protects the community from the pounding waves of hurricanes.

For 30 years the city has replenished its beaches with sand from offshore sources, pumping it directly from the ocean floor. But these sources are thinning, and the process is complicated by three sensitive coral reefs that run parallel to the coastline. Consequently, local leaders must look elsewhere for sand. Just taking the sand from elsewhere, they've learned, is not a neighborly thing to do. They sparked controversy last year when they sought sand offshore from St. Lucie County, some 120 miles up the East Coast. Residents there accused Miami Beach of plotting to rob them of sand.

So now they are eyeing sandy shores across the sea.Miami Beach leaders are turning toward foreign sources such as the Bahamas. They've received offers from the Dominican Republic, the Turks and Caicos Islands, and Mexico. In the Dominican Republic, for example, a fish farm offered to sell Miami Beach sand from newly dug fish ponds.

But there's a problem: Federal law prevents Miami Beach from considering foreign sources until a domestic search is exhausted. So local leaders and the US Army Corps of Engineers have drafted a report summarizing their far-reaching effort. They hope for approval later this year to begin importing foreign sand, said Brian Flynn, an administrator in the Miami-Dade Department of Environmental Resources Management.

"If we have one more hurricane we're going to need an external source," he said. "We're the first county that's essentially run out of sand. Broward County to our north is right behind us. They've probably got one more project, and they're going to be out."

Other coastal communities are bracing for the same, as hurricanes, rising ocean levels, and other forces combine to erode beaches even as they assume cornerstone roles in local and state economies. Communities in southern California and Hawaii also are facing similar shortages, said Charley Chesnutt, a coastal engineer for the Institute for Water Resources, a research organization of the US Army Corps of Engineers.

It's not that sand is a diminishing resource, but that its distribution is uneven, an unfortunate habit of nature for communities like Miami Beach. The costly challenge is getting sand to match a beach, granules that are the same size and color.