Shoreline Erosion: Safety & Financial Risks

Imagine driving down a new street and noticing the most beautiful house you’ve ever seen. Its bright paint, glistening windows, and clean, welcoming porch show that it’s well cared for. But you find yourself distracted by something – a neglected lawn. It’s overrun with weeds, debris, and uprooted trees. It has dusty bare spots and deep channels where water flows anytime it rains. How can the owners take pride in their home when the yard looks like this?

This is a similar problem aquatic experts see with lakes and ponds. No matter how much a community association prioritizes water quality, it will never reach its full potential without a healthy shoreline. And just as a neglected lawn can lead to complaints from neighbors, cause home values to plummet, and even citations by the city, so can a deteriorated shoreline.

Waterbodies with degraded shorelines also tend to experience flooding problems. Most of the ponds we see in HOAs, POAs, CDDs, and urban areas are man-made to collect stormwater when it rains. Eroded sediment can fill them with muck, reducing depth and volume. Dangerous flooding is more likely to occur if the stormwater facility cannot function properly. In addition to the liabilities this can cause, flooding expedites the rate of erosion and may cause waterfront properties – and their estimated value – to “shrink” over time. 

In addition to the obvious signs of erosion, property managers may notice that maintaining healthy water quality is becoming more challenging. Lakes and ponds filled with muck are more likely to have dissolved oxygen (DO) deficiencies and elevated nutrient levels. These imbalances often manifest as nuisance aquatic weeds and toxic algae blooms, fish kills, bad odors, and cloudiness–resulting in an unsightly lake and an influx of complaints from residents.

Poor shoreline management can also accelerate the timeline for more substantial maintenance services like dredging, which is one of the largest expenses a community may ever face. Though all waterbodies will need to be reset at some point by digging out all accumulated sediment, communities usually have 20-30 years to plan and budget for a major dredging project. In cases of severe erosion, this could drop to less than 10 years, leaving community leaders in a very difficult position – divert funds from other important maintenance projects or increase dues and suffer the blowback?

Once erosion occurs, it can be difficult to halt future damage. When partnering with a professional, they will work with you to evaluate the level of deterioration and muck development, and design a restoration plan that’s customized to the unique qualities of your waterbody. Often, these involve the use of tools that allow aquatic experts to bioengineer a new shoreline that is incredibly stable and aesthetically pleasing. They may recommend pairing these efforts with mechanical hydro-raking to scoop out bottom muck in target areas, which will then be shaped and sodded over to reestablish several feet of land back to the property. 

Shoreline erosion is a slow burn; it’s easy to ignore, but it’s also easy to intervene. Professionals recommend integrating several proactive solutions into the ongoing maintenance practices on your property:

• Cultivate a beneficial buffer of tall native plants around the perimeter of your waterbody to slow stormwater runoff and help hold the soil in place.
• Monitor wildlife populations – species like muskrats and invasive armored catfish (found primarily in Florida) are known to burrow and destablize banks.
• Introduce docks or special paths for visitors to safely fish, kayak, or enjoy the view without trampling vulnerable areas.
• Partner with a professional to regularly survey the area for invasive weeds that can quickly take over sensitive shorelines.
• Properly dispose of yard waste, pet droppings, trash, and other debris so it doesn’t decay and contribute to muck build up in your waterbody.
• Reduce the use of lawn and garden fertilizers, which fuel the growth of aquatic weeds and algae.
• Break down muck by introducing nutrient remediation products, biological bacteria, and aerators that increase DO, which is essential to the digestion process.