Federal Ban on Foreign Sand Rubs Florida the Wrong Way
27th October 2017
Thanks to an obscure provision of the 1986 Water Resources Development Act, the federal government and the South Florida communities hit by Hurricane Irma have been prohibited from procuring foreign sand for their beach replenishment projects until all other feasible domestic sources have been tapped.
Foreign companies have offered to contain these costs by importing white sand from the Bahamas by barge at as little as half the cost of domestic sand. But thanks to current federal law, these battered communities have had to tell these willing sand suppliers to take a hike, hamstringing local recovery efforts.