In a joint effort with state governments financed at 65 percent by the federal government, the Army Corps of Engineers has been replenishing eroded beach sand along the nation's coastlines. A Monmouth, New Jersey, replenishment project is projected to cost $1 billion, and $500 million will go to repair the beaches of Ocean City, Maryland, over the next fifty years and presumably then on into perpetuity.

Ocean City Public Works Director George Savastano, whose city has used $30 million to replenish beaches over the last six years, justifies the cost by noting that over 200 million tourists visit these beaches each year, adding that the effort has saved millions in federal disaster relief by protecting oceanfront properties. Environmentalists protest the practice out of concern for the unknown effects of human intervention in the natural relocation of beach sand through constantly shifting ocean currents.

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