SARASOTA COUNTY – State Senator Joe Gruters and DEP Secretary Noah Valenstein held a press conference today to announce a $125,000 dollar grant to fight beach erosion in Sarasota County.
Sarasota County has nearly 35 miles of sandy shorelines, of which 24.2 have been critically eroding.
The goal is to develop a long term comprehensive study to ensure the protection of Sarasota’s beaches from rising sea levels
The resiliency study will determine what areas are at risk in terms of sea-level rise and beach erosion on the coastline to make better decisions going forward.
“Dr. Beach himself ranked Siesta Beach number one a couple of times, we’re always in the top ten,” said State Senator, Joe Gruters. “We recently were in the top ten again, so it is a huge boom to our economy the question is how are we going to ensure with everything going on out there that not only Siesta but Lido and all the beaches in Sarasota County that we remain number one ten years, twenty years, fifty years from now.”
“This hopefully will be the roadmap that we need to take us into the future to ensure that we remain number one,” said Gruters.
Sarasota County will work Commissioner Christian Ziegler to develop the resiliency plan.
