Beach Replenishment
Replenishing sand on our beaches is an essential environmental and economic initiative to protect and preserve our coastline and properties.
Current Status
Demobilization of the beach replenishment equipment at the 37th Street staging area is continuing and the project is moving to Croatan Beach, where replenishment is a high priority. Work there is expected to begin by early-to-mid July and sand replenishment is anticipated to last about a month.
The beach will remain open during the replenishment project outside the orange safety fenced areas.
The City continues to monitor conditions and support our federal partners, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, on this important resiliency project.
It’s estimated that $20.2 million in investments by the City of Virginia Beach in replenishment efforts along the Resort Area Beach since 2002 have averted more than $1 billion in storm-related damages.
Oceanfront Beach Replenishment 2025
The 2025 replenishment project began in late January along the Resort Area Beach between 15th and 45th Street. It’s a mitigation and environmental sustainability effort restoring eroded coastal areas damaged by severe climate conditions, such as storms, winds, waves and flooding.
With the last beach replenishment effort carried out in 2019, the City is following its beach replenishment implementation schedule of every five to seven years to protect and preserve our coastline. The City is benefitting from the dredge activity of the Port Authority’s need to dredge the Atlantic Ocean Channel (AOC) and doesn't turn down opportunities to put more material on the beach to enhance hurricane protection efforts.
This project successfully placed 180,000 cubic yards of sand over 1,100 linear feet of beach. Sand is constantly churned around by the waves crashing onto the beach. This constant energy contributes to relocation of the sand up and down the coastline as well as back to sea.
Due to the additional time it took to place the finer grain-sized sand onto the Resort Beach, the contractor was unable to place the anticipated 950,000 cubic yards of sand. Because the Resort Beach project wasn’t completed this year, any unused funding will return to a hurricane protection fund for future replenishment efforts.
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