Updated October 2016

BOEM Response to Hurricane Sandy: 

Update on Recovery Assistance and Resilience Planning

In October 2012, Hurricane Sandy struck the East Coast, affecting millions of people, causing billions of 

dollars of destruction, and creating widespread environmental damage. The Bureau of Ocean Energy 

Management (BOEM) was called upon along with partners at all levels of government to help restore 

coastlines and communities devastated by Hurricane Sandy. BOEM 

also added extra resources to foster

long-term resilience planning.

BOEM’s Marine Minerals Program 

(MMP) is responsible for managing 

non-energy minerals (primarily sand 

and gravel) on the ocean floor, and is 

the only Federal program authorized 

to grant access to outer continental 

shelf (OCS) sand. OCS sand has been 

a source of material for numerous storm damage reduction and coastal restoration projects taking place 

as a result of Sandy. As stewards of these resources, the bureau ensures that the removal of any mineral 

resource is conducted in a safe and environmentally sound manner, and that any potentially adverse 

impacts on the marine, coastal, or human environments are avoided or minimized. 

Priorities:

BOEM is committed to long-term recovery and resiliency of coastal areas damaged by Hurricane Sandy. 

The five primary aspects of the MMP’s role in Hurricane Sandy recovery have been to: 

 participate in the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) National Disaster 

Recovery Framework;

 dedicate personnel to negotiate agreements for urgent coastal restoration projects;

 coordinate with stakeholders to ensure exchange of vital information on a continuing basis;

 collaborate with state agencies to determine current and future OCS sand resource needs; and

 identify additional sand resource borrow areas.

In 2013 BOEM received $13.6 million for Hurricane Sandy response under the Disaster Relief 

Appropriations Act, and in 2016, an additional $2.7 million to address critical needs for OCS sand 

throughout the areas undergoing recovery and rebuilding. BOEM has used approximately $6 million of 

these funds for cooperative agreements with Atlantic coast states to identify OCS resources and update 

maps and data for future projects, determine future sand needs, conduct coastal resiliency studies and 

OCS sand resource evaluations, and supplement broad scale environmental monitoring. The Act 

strengthened the bureau’s ability to work with its partners to identify sand resources and ensure that 

BOEM’s Hurricane Sandy response included sand from the Outer Continental Shelf 

to reinforce the dunes and restore the beach at Sandbridge, Virginia Beach

in 2013. Photo: Marjorie Weisskohl, BOEM.
Updated October 2016

appropriate work can be completed so sand is conveyed in a timely and environmentally responsible 

manner. Each Hurricane Sandy state page contains summary reports from the cooperative agreements. 

Since Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell announced the funding in May 2013, BOEM has been fully

engaged in executing all aspects of its response plans, including restoration projects in Sandbridge 

Beach and Wallops Island, Va.; Brevard County, Fla.; and Long Beach Island, N.J. 

In 2014, BOEM awarded a contract to identify, map, take core sediment samples of new sources of 

offshore sand in federal waters from Massachusetts to Miami, Fla., and analyze the data. To support the 

effort, BOEM completed an Environmental Assessment describing and evaluating the potential 

environmental impacts related to reasonably foreseeable geophysical and geological impacts from the 

survey activities. It also issued a Finding of No Significant Impact for proposed activities under the 

initiative, called the Atlantic Sand Assessment Project or ASAP. When coupled with broad scale 

environmental monitoring, the ASAP will facilitate a regional sand resource management perspective.

BOEM and the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory dedicated the ASAP core repository and database in 

October 2016.

Florida’s southeast coast provides an example of sand resources within state waters being depleted. 

BOEM balances its responsibility to optimize OCS resource use while considering a myriad of physical, 

biological, economic and social implications. To address this responsibility, BOEM is actively engaged

with Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to 

determine how best to manage the allocation of Federal sand resources to that region.

BOEM has conducted regional sand management working group meetings and participated in regional 

ocean council meetings. Hurricane Sandy highlighted the need for all stakeholders to take a more 

proactive regional approach to building coastal resilience, rather than addressing needs at the individual 

project scale.

Other work related to Hurricane Sandy includes broad-scale 

environmental monitoring offshore Cape Canaveral, begun in October 

2013 through agreements with the University of Florida and the 

Navy. Data obtained from this six-year study will support more 

informed resource management decisions by helping BOEM to better 

understand the ecological function and recovery of dredged ridgeswale habitats.

Another lasting benefit from the disaster relief funding and BOEM’s 

ramped-up engagement is the strengthened relationships with existing 

and new stakeholders. These include ongoing discussions with sand 

management working groups in the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, South 

Atlantic, Florida, and the Northeast Regional Ocean Council; the MidAtlantic Regional Planning Body; Association of American State 

Geologists, American Shore and Beach Preservation Association, 

Florida Shore and Beach Preservation Association, American Fisheries 

Society, and other groups concerned with building coastal resilience. 

For the latest information on the program, see http://www.boem.gov/Marine-Minerals-Program/. 

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After surgically implanting a transmitter to 

track the movement of a juvenile finetooth 

shark, a researcher returns the fish to its 

native habitat off Florida’s Cape 

Canaveral. Adult finetooth sharks are 

abundant on the Canaveral Shoals complex 

from fall through spring. About 400 fish 

have been tagged in the first three years of 

the study. Photo courtesy of Eric Reyier,

Kennedy Space Center Ecological 

Program.