Pushing Sand at McKinley Beach

McKinley Beach reconstruction. Photo by Graham Kilmer.

If your kid likes trucks and skid steers and bulldozers, bring them to McKinley Beach at your soonest convenience for some sun and heavy construction equipment.

The approximately $918,000 reconstruction of McKinley Beach began this week and as of Wednesday, there were still trucks hauling sand onto the beach. All total, $1,093,742 has been appropriated for the design and construction of the beach.

No surprise there as the project is expected to require approximately 850 truckloads of sand. Contractor C.W. Purpero, Inc. will haul in and smooth out an estimated 11,500 cubic yards of sand at the beach.

“We do want the public to know that the beach will look different,” said Sarah Toomsen, planning and development manager for Milwaukee County Parks. “There will be more sand in order to accomplish this filling of the beach.”

Toomsen was briefing Milwaukee County Supervisors on the reconstruction project at a recent meeting of the board’s Committee on Parks and Culture. The board began pushing for reconstruction after a series of drownings in 2020 at the beach. Supervisors commissioned a study of the water conditions and ultimately funded a project that will restore the beach to the original water depths created when it was constructed in 1989.

The study found that rip currents being fueled by higher-than-average water levels in 2020 were fueling dangerous swimming conditions at the beach. The depth between the two breakwaters that hem in the crescent beach was originally approximately two feet. The water depths between the breakwaters have since reached as high as six feet. More depth means more water, which means more energy available to rip currents and waves.

A temporary asphalt path has been laid near the north end of the beach, so that dump trucks, seen arriving in groups of three, can pull directly onto the beach. Sand is being bulldozed out around the elbows of the beach toward the breakwaters where it is closing a watery gap between the shore and the heavy rip rap that armors it.

The water will play a role in carrying the sand out between the breakwaters and Toomsen told supervisors the department plans to conduct periodic assessments of the water depths, to make sure that dangerous conditions aren’t noticed until it’s too late. “So that hopefully, we don’t run into a scenario again, where we have scour holes, extreme depths, and then when we have high water events or large wage wave activity at the beach that are unsafe conditions,” she said.

Wednesday, June 21

12►

Tuesday, June 20

Update: This story has been updated to correct the amount of funding allocated for the project. A previous version of this story used a figure on a public-facing webpage for the project managed by Milwaukee County Parks. The correct figure is $1,093,742.