With a planned beach renourishment postponed until fall of 2023, Gulf Shores officials are studying ways to keep beaches open to emergency and maintenance vehicles and keeping them safe for beachgoers.

Several areas of West Beach roughly in the West Sixth Street to West 10th Street area are so badly eroded almost to the point of not having room for beach chairs. The beaches were badly eroded during Sally and subsequent winter storms and the overnight storm of Jan. 24-25 have eroded them further.

“We’ve got considerable concerns about some of our beach erosion and access to places,” Mayor Robert Craft said at the end of the Jan. 23 council meeting. “The way the beach has eroded and we’ve lost sand there’s going to be a lot of opportunities down there – or the lack of opportunity – for people to set up a lot of chairs in areas typically behind some of our condominiums.”

A new permit requirement for historical and environmental review of the areas of the Gulf bottom where sand would be harvested was a new FEMA rule and Gulf Shores as well as Orange Beach and Gulf State Park are still awaiting final approval before the vital work can begin.

See related story: FEMA permitting to hold up beach renourishment till fall of 2023

See related story: Part of Gulf Shores beach impassable for emergency, city crews

“It's quite a disappointment,” Craft said. “We were scheduled to do the renourishment this year. We had our permits and everything in order. There was a change on the federal level of requirements. We could not meet the timeframe of doing it in the off season and it doesn’t make sense to renourish the beach during the middle of the season when people are there. It’s dangerous, you’ve got equipment running up and down the beach.”

He asked Building Official Brandan Franklin who also serves as the city’s Emergency Management Agency coordinator to give an update on how the city would proceed to ensure safety and keep a corridor open for city vehicles.

“Our police department, public works department and fire and rescue are all working together right now to try to come up with a plan on how we allow our service providers access on the beach,” Franklin said. “But also allow us a safety plan as well as far as how we keep the beaches clean and how we provide safety to everyone that’s visiting the beaches.”

He's also been meeting with officials with several of the condos most directly affected by the eroded beaches.

“I met with several of the property managers today and walked through a couple of those areas talking about beach access and how we can get tourists down to the beach yet maintain what corridors that we can and trying to come up with a solution,” Franklin said. “Hopefully the beaches will replenish some in March, April of this year and then maybe we can take another approach to try to provide additional areas. We may just have to wait until August-September for the renourishment project starts again.”

Orange Beach Coastal Resources Director Phillip West said while beaches in his city need renourishment but none of them are as critically in need as the stretch of West Beach in Gulf Shores.