Beach Rebuilding Would Experiment With Fighting Climate Change While Protecting Against It

The latest weapon in the fight against climate change could be introduced to the world on the Peconic Bay shoreline in the northern Southampton hamlet of North Sea.

An international startup dedicated to fighting climate change is hoping to piggyback on local beach nourishment projects as a vehicle for reducing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and countering ocean acidification. The company, known as Project Vesta, proposed rolling out its first real-world pilot as part of a planned dredging of the inlet to North Sea Harbor next month.

Project Vesta has devised a plan to use sand made from ground-up olivine — a mineral that makes up a substantial portion of igneous rocks throughout the world — mixed into the native sand that is dredged from the floor of bays or seas to rebuild eroded beaches.

As the olivine dissolves into the seawater, just as it would when the igneous rocks it comes from slowly erode, it naturally raises the alkalinity of the sea, allowing it to both absorb more carbon from the atmosphere and offsetting the acidification of sea water from the excesses of carbon dioxide emissions over the last century that scientists say are already posing a threat to many forms of sea life like shellfish.

The North Sea Beach Colony has applied for permits to employ a Suffolk County dredge to remove about 15,000 cubic yards of sand out of the North Sea Harbor inlet — which has become largely impassible for boats — and deposit the sand on the shoreline between the inlet and North Sea Road. The colony has created its own erosion control district to levy a special tax on its residents and use the funds exclusively for restoring and maintaining the beach at the foot of the neighborhood’s bluffs.

If the project is approved — state and federal agencies still must grant exemptions from seasonal prohibitions on beach work when piping plovers have moved into the region — and goes forward next month, the second component would be the addition of about 500 cubic yards of the olivine sand, trucked in along North Sea Road and bulldozed atop the dredged sand.

Aram Terchunian, the Westhampton Beach coastal geologist who has helped the North Sea Beach Colony plan the beach nourishment effort, said that the gray-green olivine grains would quickly disperse among the grains of natural sand and would have no effect on the appearance or feel of the beach.

The science of the approach, he added, seems a no-brainer.

“I met these guys in a virtual conference, and when they explained to me what they were doing, I was blown away,” Terchunian said. “That something so simple could be so effective and could be a piece of how we address this issue. It’s straight off the shelf.”

In the long run, the key to reversing human-driven climate change will require reducing CO2 emissions worldwide and permanently, Project Vesta’s CEO Tom Green said, but using olivine to help close the gap in the meantime holds promise that should not be ignored.

“We need to reduce emissions, but what is becoming increasingly clear is that carbon dioxide removal is needed in addition to emissions reduction,” Green said. “Cutting emissions is not happening quickly enough, and there’s already a trillion tons of excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. We need approaches that remove carbon dioxide permanently and are scalable to billions of tons a year, and there’s a significant body of research coming out of the scientific community that spreading olivine sand in coastal waters could meet the criteria.”

Green and Project Vesta describe the process they are envisioning as simply taking a natural process that is already happening — the erosion of rocks by rainfall, over millenniums, which ultimately flows to the seas — and accelerating it by mechanically breaking down the olivine and depositing it in the ocean.

Olivine is already mined for use in the making of steel, and the company has procured the 650 tons it hopes to use in North Sea from a mine in Norway. The supply is en route to the United States now, Green says.

“This is a nature-based solution,” the CEO added during a conversation this week. “For billions of years, olivine has been removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. It is one of the most abundant minerals on the planet. It’s found all over the world.”

Once the olivine sand is introduced to the system, Project Vesta will monitor evolution of the nourishment effort, tracking the dispersal of the olivine with core samples and monitoring the environment around the project for any signs of unexpected changes or side effects.

The pilot project will cost about $2 million, mostly going to the cost of the scientific research and monitoring of the project area. The costs would be paid entirely by Project Vesta.

The pilot proposal has been given the green light by the State Department of Environmental Conservation but is awaiting permits, along with the broader dredging and beach nourishment effort itself, from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. An exemption is needed to allow the project to proceed at a time of year when any work on local beaches is typically prohibited because of concern for nesting piping plovers, which are federally protected.

The Project Vesta pitch has been embraced by the residents of the North Sea Beach Colony, who are paying about $90,000 toward the beach nourishment project.

“If it’s good for the beach, and it’s good for the environment, and it’s good for everyone who uses the beach, then we support it,” said Kevin P. Beatty, the president of the North Sea Beach Colony. “We embarked on this replenishment project with our own funds because we think it is good for the community and good for Southampton. And Project Vesta presents an opportunity to further enhance North Sea Beach for generations to come.”

Project Vesta is a private company, co-founded by Green, staffed by a platoon of Ph.D.s and funded by a mix of philanthropic support and financial investors who see profit-making potential in the long-game of the olivine experiment.

The company has a project in the planning for a beach in the Dominican Republic and is exploring other sites along the East Coast of the United States for additional small-scale pilots.

If the effort proves promising, opportunities for the process to be expanded abound. On Long Island, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is about to mobilize the Fire Island to Montauk Point Reformulation, or FIMP, a decades-long plan anchored by several massive beach nourishment projects between Fire Island and Montauk that calls for regular replenishments.

The coastlines in New Jersey, the Carolinas and Florida are almost constantly being restored by massive dredges at scales that could accommodate millions of tons of olivine.

“As the Earth continues to warm, sea levels are not only rising they’re rising at an accelerating rate, so the need for coastal management and erosion protection will only keep increasing,” Green said. “So what we’re looking to show with this demonstration pilot is that introducing olivine sand into these nourishment projects can be an effective way to remove CO2 from the atmosphere … and then we can get two benefits in one: protect coastlines and address the root cause of sea level rise at the same time.”