In my Marine Biology studies we had a lab class that spent six three day week-ends at various places along the northern California coast. This professor did the same six places four times a year. We took samples of everything and did surveys.
I was shocked at how easy it was to create a countour map.
The one that most impressed me was of a sandy beach. He had years of countour maps of the same beach. It showed that the sand was pulled out during certain seasons and pushed back in during others. Although a beach looked compeletly different in June than it did in December it looked the same every June and every December.
When the natural process is messed with by building sea walls and piers we mess it all up.
I KNOW - we need docks - but we need to understand the nature of everything we do and make appropriate allowances.
If we don't save what we have - what will we have?

Does anyone have pictures of the new beach?

I saw a big digger just south of the Rainbow last week when we came over for a yummy lunch.
A curtain was being strung from the Rainbow pier to the next one south and the guy on the digger was doing some kind of maneuvers with the machine. It looked like the operator did not have much skill.
Where will the sand come from for the fill for this area - it was a very large space and I can't imagine a digger being able to provide the material.

The dredge is out in front and pumping sand from just past most of the piers. Right now its a construction site not very pretty. We'll see what the end result will look like.

The laws of physics will fill in the dredge...where do you suppose that sand will come from?????? Wouldn't it make more sense to get the sand from an area away from the island and barge it in?

Aren't permits necessary for dredging? And with this particular location, why would the permit have been granted? Someone should check into this. Perhaps this is illegal dredging?

Yes a permit is required. If there is any illegal dredging there are plenty of local folks who will act, report etc.
There is no upside for any of the players to do something destructive. Let's hope they have good results from their efforts ----- and if not, that they/we learn and do not repeat the mistakes.

This is a political thing from the election.The money is small and the permits were not issued by those who are focused on the environment.
The new beach will be gone soon. Most of those expensive seawalls that are damaging the neighbors property will be mostly buriedand become obstructions on the beach.
A number of repeat tourists mentioned the seawalling of Caye Caulker since last year with regret. It takes away the beach water access and turns CC into a wharf town with bad erosion problems at the end of every seawall. In most cases those walls were no meant to stop erosion, though that is the stated purpose.mostly they wanted to create a wider stretch of land in front of their place,and now regard that gov land as their own. They have had to take down a number of Private Beach signs.

Bummer.