Customer Reviews

The Corps and the Shore

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Scourge of developers everwhere, coastal geologist Pilkey is the deepest and most penetrating thinker we have about our complex relationship with the shoreline. With this book, Pilkey makes public his disgust with the ham-handed and over-engineered tactics of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and their walling of the American coastline.

Whether you live near the coast, are thinking of moving there, or are just curious about those million-dollar Malibu mansion you see tumbling into the Pacific every winter, you need to read this book.

Book: The Corps and the Shore Authors: Orrin H. Pilkey, Katharine L. Dixon

It's not difficult to beat up the Army Corps of Engineers. It's run roughshod over more than one engineering and erth moving project. In this book the authors make a compelling case (as do several other good books)that the Corps used traditional steel and concrete projects to force human utilization on the nation's coastal zones. In spite of the very incisive and useful analysis in this book we should recognize that American's love the coast, are moving there in unprescedented numbers, and are investing massive amounts of capital in housing, recreational, and commercial construction.

Was the Army Corps of Engineers a culprit in the "urbanization" of America's coastlines and beaches or was the Corps an inevitable partner in coastal development? My own analysis (see our discussion at ...) is that the coast and seashore is a magnet for population throughout the world. Most "megacities" in the world are coastal cities. It is instructive that, although the Corps exists only in the United States, "Corps-like" construction and structures which seriously assault the coastal areas (by "armouring" the beach) takes place in all the coastal zones I have studied.

Everyone who has visited, lived, or worked near the beach must read this book. But ask yourself this "If the Army Corps had not undertaken these projects who would have done so?"

Steffen Schmidt, Ph.D Professor of Politics and Coastal Policy Iowa State University and Nova Southeastern University, Oceanographic Center, Ft. Lauderdale

This book should be on the required reading list for any course on Marine and Coastal Engineering. As Engineers we love the challenge of designing and building sometimes wonderful structures as solutions to perceived engineering problems. While engrossed in the math, the modeling and the logistics, we often neglect to stand back and look at work of the real master of the Marine environment - Mother Nature herself, and the real problem in the majority of these cases, our interference with her naturally engineered structures. This book does that eloquently from an acutely informed point of view. It offers an invaluable engineering counterpoint and shouldn't be dismissed as simply a couple of greens having a cut at the corps!