Here's another good one: The city of Long Beach in California spends close to that much every year to do the same thing to protect mansions built on a sand bar (the Long Beach Peninsula) that are about 50 feet from the water line on a good day. They just keep constantly moving sand from one end of the beach to the other end a couple miles away. That's city money. The article below has some details, but only refers to the city saving $100k to $300k a year by bringing the work in house. The figure I've heard is more like $500k a year. I imagine it's actually higher than that, even. They have dedicated big earth movers, a built facility to store and maintain them, employees dedicated to it, etc. Do the math. This is probably happening all over the country and all over the world.