The Florida Department of Environmental Protection, Bureau of Beaches and Coastal Systems, is often faced with requests to permit, implement or fund new and innovative erosion control projects. The Department considers new and innovative shore protection technologies as applied science, intended to solve an erosion problem, and about which the Department staff and professional engineering community have insufficient information to predict project performance and reliability, and potential impacts to the beach dune system.

In 1989, the Florida Legislature enacted a law (161.082, F.S.) that allows the Department to encourage the development of new and innovative methods for dealing with the coastal erosion problems along the state’s shorelines. The law provides the Department the ability to authorize the construction of pilot projects utilizing alternative erosion control methods, upon receipt of an application from a riparian property owner or governmental entity, and upon consideration of the facts and circumstances surrounding the application. Additional guidance for the regulatory approval of new/innovative shore protection technologies is provided in Chapter 62B-41.075, F.A.C. 

The Department hosted a workshop on innovative shore protection technologies in Tallahassee, on February 22-23, 2006. The workshop offered designers and vendors of new and innovative shore protection technologies an opportunity to showcase their ideas and products. They are presented in a report on the workshop below:

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