Red Clay: A Pox on our Snow
White Beaches!
Dennis Hatfield, President LLPS
How did our beaches get so
white?
 Our beaches are special! 99.97% snow white, pure quartz
sand, with no natural clay, and a very small (.03%)
percentage of dark iron and titanium rich heavy minerals
 The source materials for the “Miracle Strip” are quartz and
feldspar rich granites from the Appalachians
 The quartz sand rich Miracle Strip is a “mature” product of
numerous repeated episodes of erosion, and deposition.
Physical transport and chemical weathering have removed
all less resistant minerals and left only the quartz
 Microscopic examination of individual sand grains tells a
story. The sand is well sorted, and each grain is almost
perfectly rounded, frosted, polished, and pitted
A “River of Sand” brings us our
Sand From Apalachicola
 Mobile Bay delivers a
tremendous volume of
distinctly different
sediment to our coast
compared to “Miracle
Strip” sediments derived
from Fla
 A “river of sand” flows
from Apalachicola to the
mouth of Mobile Bay
 The Fort Morgan
Peninsula forms a
barrier which effectively
separates Mobile Bay
sediments from “Miracle
Strip” sediments
Red Clay on the Miracle Strip is
like a “Road Alligator”
 If we want Lagoon waters to remain relatively clear, and lagoon
and beach sand to remain unique/special/white we have to say
no to importing any and all red/yellow materials onto Pleasure
Island
 Clay is both a textural and mineralogical term-clay minerals and
sized particles are 1/256 MM and smaller
 Sediments turn yellow or red because the iron contained in them
is “oxidized”
 Oxidized clay sized sediment is very mobile-easily transported
by water and wind
 A small amount of oxidized iron rich material can stain a large
amount of pure white sand for a long time, and once it is in our
special pure white quartz sand environment, it can do damage
over and over again
Red Clay is Illegal along the Fort
Morgan Road
 Uses:
– Inexpensive (short term) road bed and house pad
material
– Inexpensive (short term) fill and grade material
 Gulf Shores recently passed ordinance prohibiting colored
materials for use south and in large areas north of the Fort
Morgan Hwy
 Code enforcement is currently lacking, numerous
examples exist of code violations since new code passed
 We (LLPS) can help by educating/understanding code,
reporting code violations and following up to see that code
is enforced, and violations punished