Renourishment project gets moving this week

Hilton Head Island is well-known for its pristine beaches, but keeping the shoreline in good shape is no easy task.

But the process of rebuilding one of the top amenities of Hilton Head is one that takes more than three years to prepare, and it involves sophisticated calculations, complicated machinery and constant monitoring to get it right.

Crews with the renourishment contractor plan to work 24 hours a day to complete the project. They can renourish about 200 to 300 feet per day, town engineer Scott Liggett said.

While the actual sound of the sand being pumped onto the beach tends to blend into the background ocean noise, the main complaint during the last project in 1997 was the back-up beepers on the bulldozers, Liggett said.

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