Canaveral Harbor Sand Bypass project on track for major savings and beach protection

BREVARD COUNTY, Fla. —
Lawmakers, engineers, and members of the Port Authority provided an update on the monthslong Canaveral Harbor Sand Bypass project during a visit to Jetty Park on Thursday.

“It’s a bigger, better project,” senior project manager Chris Ren said.

This year, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is taking a different approach to rebuilding the beaches. Instead of taking sand from offshore, they're taking sand from another part of the beach, north of the port, where there's too much sand surrounding the jetty.

The Army Corps of Engineers said that by combining beach renourishment projects, they are saving $20 million.

“The team was able to fully develop a new way of executing this project, resulting in the largest bypass to date in terms of the amount of sand and the length of beaches renourished,” Col. Brandon Bowman said.

Cutting costs and reallocating funds has been top of mind for the Department of Government Efficiency. With that comes concerns over losing federal dollars, and beach renourishment could be on their radar.

“These are inside the budget right now, and the push that I’ll be making, like I mentioned before, is that this is an investment in our beaches. It’s not only an investment in our way of life, but it’s also a financial investment,” congressman Mike Haridopolos said. “I’m confident that when I talk to other members of Congress, the U.S. Senate, and, let alone, our president, if this is on the chopping block for whatever reason, we can walk them through — here is the ROI we can get back by making these investments.”

Project managers said this effort will help protect the region during hurricane season.

“I acknowledge it is inconvenient closing off a thousand feet, two thousand feet of beach while we work,” Ren said. “But just give us a few days or a week, and we’ll be off the beach.”

They'll wrap up work on April 30, 2025. Renourishment efforts will begin again in November 2025 and continue until April 2026.