PINELLAS COUNTY, Fla. — It's Spring Break, and that means a lot of money and visitors flocking to the Tampa Bay area.
But we're learning about a major problem in Pinellas County with tourists trampling sand dunes.
The county just built them up over the past few months following a series of strong storms hitting the Tampa Bay area.
Melanie Rattanachane owns a shop near St. Pete Beach called Fresh Factory and is worried about the dunes.
"You got to protect our beaches. That's why we have all the tourists and visitors that we do. It really helps drive the economy for the small businesses on the beach," said Rattanachane.
Rattanachane said dunes are critical for protecting businesses along the beach.
"We have been fortunate and very thankful for things like the dunes in keeping some of the water at bay and not flooding here at the shop," said Rattanachane.
Zach Westfall is an environmental scientist for Pinellas County who said that following Hurricane Idalia, many of the dunes were ruined.
"We're trying to restore the habitat and offer coast protection to those in the hotels and the condos behind them," said Westfall.
Within the last couple of months, the county wrapped up a multi-million dollar dune restoration project.
"For those few months, we were just constantly building dunes," said Westfall.
But since the beginning of Spring Break in the Tampa Bay area, some of that work has been disturbed.
"What we have seen a lot of his people kind of digging in the dunes walking on the dunes, trampling our beach vegetation that we planted," said Westfall.
Westfall said he's had to place at least 20 signs out at Upham Beach to remind people about the dunes.
"It's having a negative impact on the performance of our dunes because if you're traveling over them, the sand is being moved around, you're destroying the vegetation too, so the vegetation can't take root," said Westfall.
Pinellas County leaders said they go to the beaches to check on those dunes about every two weeks, and they also try to educate people about them.
Business owners said they are also trying to remind people about the rules.
"Do you know we're all small business owners here, so this is our lifeline as well, so we just wanna make sure that you know we do as much as we can naturally," said Rattanachane.
