Engineer of the Coast, Michael Poff, on Building the Beaches of the Future

October 4, 2020

Inside coastal engineering with CEC President Michael Poff.

This week, Peter Ravella and Tyler Buckingham check in with an old friend, Michael Poff, President of Coastal Engineering Consultants of Bonita Springs, Florida.   We all worked together on the Manasota Key Beach restoration project back in the days before ASPN and all this podcasting business.  Together, we discuss the recently completed Manasota Key project and CEC's island-building projects off of Louisiana.  We also dive into  the future of coastal engineering, shoreline modeling, and more. Google machine learning now. It might come up!

Show Transcription
This transcription was generated by a computer. Please excuse any errors.
Peter Ravella & Tyler Buckingham

Peter and Tyler joined forces in 2015 and from the first meeting began discussing a project that would become Coastal News Today and the American Shoreline Podcast Network. At the time, Peter and Tyler were coastal consultants for Pete’s firm, PAR Consulting, LLC. In that role, they worked with coastal communities in Texas, Florida, and North Carolina, engaged in grant writing, coastal project development, shoreline erosion and land use planning, permitting, and financial planning for communities undertaking big beach restoration projects. Between and among their consulting tasks, they kept talking and kept building the idea of CNT & ASPN. In almost every arena they worked, public engagement played a central role. They spent thousands of hours talking with coastal stakeholders, like business owners, hotel operators, condo managers, watermen, property owners, enviros, surfers, and fishermen. They dived deep into the value, meaning, and responsibility for the American shoreline, segment-by-segment. Common threads emerged, themes were revealed, differences uncovered. There was a big conversation going on along the American shoreline! But, no place to have it. That's where CNT and ASPN were born.