Rob Young thought he could improve on the WNC Strong slogan created after flooding from Hurricane Helene wreaked havoc in the mountains of western North Carolina.

How about WNC Smart? It hasn’t caught on. And Young, a geology professor and director of the Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines at Western Carolina University, is not surprised. Data that he has collected about beach nourishment projects since the 1980s shows why.

With just the amount of sand moved in Southern states in the last 25 years,  Young said, “you could build a beach from the Virginia line all the way around to the Mississippi-Louisiana line that would be about 1,200 feet wide and would be about 10 feet thick. This is our current coastal management strategy.”