Indian River County—Sector 3 Beach and Dune Restoration Project

In 2010, Indian River County initiated restoration of the 6.6 miles of beach and dune known as the Sector 3 Project, which utilized previously untried technologies in that the Project: (1) was innovatively designed to avoid impacts to nearshore hardbottom, (2) was bid to allow construction via use of an offshore borrow area or upland sand mines as alternate sand sources, and (3) employed innovative sand mining processes to construct the Project meeting stringent sand quality control specifications. The Project is presented as a case study to demonstrate: (1) the nuances of the design and construction, (2) comparison of the predicted performance and that reflected in monitoring data, and (3) conclusions in the form of lessons learned relative to coastal engineering practices for beach and dune restoration.