St. Johns County beach restoration leaves fishing pier high and dry

The St. Johns County Pier no longer is over water due to a beach restoration project. Image via U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

There’s nothing quite like a stroll on a pier over the salty waters of the Atlantic Ocean. But a beach renourishment project has negated that pleasure in St. Johns County, at least for now.

A beach restoration project overseen by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has left the St. Johns County Pier in St. Augustine Beach as high as before the project.

But it’s suddenly become very dry.

The pier, located on State Road A1A in the thick of the tourism area of St. Augustine Beach, has become a walkway over sand — and that’s it.

The ongoing $33 million beach restoration is pouring 2.5 million cubic yards of sand along the shoreline from Anastasia State Park south to A Street in the beach community.

The St. Johns County Pier typically juts out over the waters of the Atlantic. But since the beach restoration has already pumped thousands of yards of sand back onto the eroded beach area, the pier is a dry structure. The beach sand area extends several yards beyond the end of the dock.

The pier has been a popular fishing destination for years, and anglers will not be able to cast lines from the structure into the water again until natural erosion of the replacement sand takes place. The structure was also popular among surfers and swimmers, as the pilings provided a break area and sometimes created better waves than other areas.

Army Corps spokesperson David Ruderman said the project’s plan included extending the sand to leave the pier dry.

“The initial sand placement will return to the nearshore system over time as a result of wave and storm erosion, and anglers will once again be able to fish from the pier; we just can’t predict when that will be,” Ruderman said in an email response to Florida Politics.

“This particular location, St. Johns County Pier and the Embassy hotel immediately to its north is the most highly erosive within the footprint of this federal shore protection project and one of the most highly erosive in St Johns County,” Ruderman said. “The present beach renourishment project is designed to include significantly greater amounts of sand in this area to compensate for that high erosion rate.”

The St. Augustine Beach renourishment project is one of two beach restoration projects in St. Johns County this year. The other project ran 9 miles from the Duval County line south into Ponte Vedra Beach.

The North St. Johns County project was completed about three weeks ago, two months ahead of schedule, costing about $40 million.