- Over 40% of Americans list beaches as their favorite vacation destination.
- Coastal states receive about 85% of all tourism revenues in the U.S. Foreiqn tourists spent about $80 billion in the U.S. in 1994.
- Travel and tourism is the largest and fastest growing segment of the expanding service industry in the U.S. Foreign tourist expenditures here generated a trade surplus of $17 billion in 1992.
- The New Jersey shore (127 miles long) generates apx. $2 billion more in beach related tourism revenues in a 10 week summer season (apx. $8 billion) than the total box office gate of every motion picture theater in the U.S. in an entire year (apx $5.6 billion in 1993).
- Much of the revenues of coastal communities are not kept in those towns, but are distributed throughout the nation. Gas, food, goods and services: a study commissioned by NOAA assessed the "multiplier" effects of the coastal economy in a 1990 study.
- The study's conclusion was that in 1985, 31.7% of the U.S. GNP, almost $1.3 trillion, originated in the 413 counties that comprise the nation's coastal zone. Production of these goods and services provided 28.3 million jobs and $479.9 billion in payroll.
- The study pointed to the enormous rollover of dollars spent in the coastal zone, dollars which benefit businessess in every corner of the nation.
- In the year 2000 those coastal counties (out of over 3,000 counties nationwide) will contain 121 million people, or 45% of the total U.S. population. It's fair to say that a large percentage of their residents will recreate at our beaches.
- Expenditures to restore the nation's beaches are less than a tenth of a percent (0.1%) of U.S. expenditures for foreign aid.
- The U.S. spends more than 10 times as much to subsidize rice production in a single state than it spends on beach restoration in the entire nation.
- In 1993 alone, the Japanese government spent hundreds of millions more for shore protection than the U.S. did in 44 years. This figure is after adjusting to 1993 dollars.
- Spain plans to spend over one billion dollars from 1993 to 1997 to restore its beaches.
- The Miami Beach restoration project was the single most important factor in the rejuvenation of that city from a dying town to an international tourist favorite in the early 1980's.
- The Maryland Department of Natural Resources estimates that damage to Ocean City, Maryland would have been as high as $93 million without the beach fill that was constructed by the Corps of Engineers.
- From 1950 through 1993 the Federal government constructed 56 major shore protection projects, nationwide. The total cost was $670.2 million, of which the Federal cost-share was $403.2 million. To put that figure in perspective, note that one county, Ocean County in New Jersey, with a typically developed coast, generates over a billion dollars in revenue every summer season!
In summary, the nation's beaches are extremely valuable to the protection of significant revenue benefits generated by the coastal tourism industry, to say nothing of the enormous value in development and infrastructure. The Federal absolutely has a major stake in, and responsibility to the continued maintenance of our beaches.
The primary information resource for this summary is "Beach Nourishment", by Dr. James Houston, Director, Coastal Engineering Research Center, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Waterways Experiment Station, Vicksburg, Mississippi. Dr. Houston's article is published in the January, 1995 issue of Shore and Beach, the journal of the American Shore & Beach Preservation Association.