The Defense Department is enlisting a familiar weapon in an effort to protect $13 billion worth of property in Avalon and Stone Harbor from nature's attacks - the sand grain.

Almost certainly, a substantial portion of the 600,000 cubic yards of sand that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers plans to pump on the Seven Mile Island beaches, as early as this week, at a cost of about $7 million is going to disappear from view with the next storm waves.

It happens all the time, and that's one reason sand-pumping has become a public symbol of the perceived futility of trying to lock in the nation's restless coastlines…

…The nation has spent $80 million to $100 million annually on shore-protection programs in the last decade, estimates Howard Marlowe, a lobbyist who has been instrumental in keeping the federal sand-dollar pumps operating.

He said that, initially, Obama was resistant to beach projects, but that he had noted a distinct recent softening. "There was a little convincing that was done," Marlowe said.

Simmons said the nation should spend more on beaches, perhaps $300 million a year, and that it needs to find a permanent funding method. He said the loss of beaches would be a tremendous blow to people who want the option of visiting them.

How would they react, he asked, if they were told: "You can't go to the beach, because there's no beach to put your towel on, there's no hotel for you to rent"?