The sand transfer plant located on the north side of the Boynton Inlet pumps a slurry of sand and seawater through a pipe under the bridge, and onto the beach south (left) of the inlet. Photo provided by Google Maps
By Jane Musgrave
After years of claiming Palm Beach County is robbing sand from its beaches, Manalapan will get another chance to persuade a judge to stop the steal.
A Florida administrative law judge will hold a five-day hearing beginning Aug. 24 to decide whether the county, with permission from Florida environmental regulators, is properly operating a sand transfer plant that moves sand across the Boynton Beach Inlet at the southern border of the town.
At a meeting on July 14, Town Manager Eric Marmer encouraged residents to write letters and attend the hearing at the South Florida Water Management District offices in West Palm Beach.
“We need a grassroots effort,” he said of the importance of residents taking action to show how important the issue is to the town.
He also encouraged residents to contact County Commissioner Marci Woodward to enlist her support. When Marmer reached out to the town’s district commissioner, he said Woodward declined to talk to him, saying that county attorneys told her she couldn’t address his concerns because of the ongoing litigation.
After years of complaining about the operations of the plant, the town in January filed a complaint with the Florida Department of Administrative Hearings.
In its 18-page petition, the town is asking Administrative Law Judge Francine Ffolkes to throw out a 10-year permit extension the county received in 2025 that allows it to increase the amount of sand that is pumped from Manalapan across the inlet to Ocean Ridge and beyond.
Taking more sand from the north side of the inlet will accelerate the damage that has already been done to the town’s fragile coastline, wrote attorney John Fumero, who was hired to represent the town.
“The increased erosion will diminish the size and quality of Manalapan’s beaches thereby injuring the environment and the natural resources of the state, reducing turtle habitat, (and) diminishing protection offered by the beaches to upland development,” he wrote.
Manalapan residents will be hurt, he said. The erosion will reduce their “enjoyment of its beaches by degrading the beaches and increasing the need for Manalapan to renourish its beaches,” concluded Fumero, former general counsel for the water management district.
The extension should have been treated as a major modification by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, he said. That would have spurred an extensive review and given the town the chance to comment on its potential impact. Instead, it was approved as a minor change. Manalapan was given no chance to object, he wrote.
Both the county and the state agency vehemently disagree with the town’s claims.
A July 10 settlement meeting failed to resolve the dispute, setting the stage for the August hearing.
This isn’t the first time the county and the town have battled over the sand transfer plant since it was built in 1937 — six years after the town was founded. It is well documented that residents in the 1930s and 1940s objected to the plant, Marmer said.
Previous legal challenges the town has filed to modify the operations of the plant have failed. Marmer feels confident that this time the town is on firm legal ground.
“I think we’ll win the admin-istrative hearing,” he said.
But Ocean Ridge Mayor Geoff Pugh, whose town’s beaches to the south of the inlet are the first to receive the sand being transferred across it, says not only would Manalapan’s request hurt Ocean Ridge beaches — it wouldn’t help Manalapan’s, either.
“For almost 90 years now, the thing has worked as it’s supposed to work,” Pugh said.
“The sand constantly moves north to south,” piling up at the inlet jetty, he said.
Any sand transfer reduction would add to the beachfront immediately north of the jetty, but wouldn’t add any sand to the beaches in Manalapan farther to the north, he said. It’s not pulling sand from those beaches either, he said; the sand movement there is all due to Mother Nature.
If the sand is left to pile up at the inlet’s jetty, it wouldn’t just deprive sand to the beaches to the south, but the sand accumulating would find its way into the inlet itself, creating problems for boaters navigating the inlet, Pugh said.
Larry Barszewski contributed to this story.
If You Go
What: Five-day hearing before administrative law judge begins 9:30 a.m. Aug. 24.
Where: South Florida Water Management District office, 3301 Gun Club Road, West Palm Beach.
People can also watch on Zoom. The meeting ID is 890 4077 2846.
Those who want to watch on their cell phones can call 929-436-2866.
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