GALVESTON - Crews are expected to begin putting new sand on about 4 miles of existing beaches along the Galveston seawall in October after a dispute with condo owners that had delayed the restoration was bypassed, the city's park board was told Tuesday.

Work on the $18.5 million beach renourishment project originally was scheduled to begin in February, but two condominium associations objected when they learned that the plan called for laying pipe on a route that passed in front of their beachfront condominiums, said Kelly de Schaun, executive director of the Galveston Park Board. The pipe was to carry the sand from Big Reef, a growing sand bar at the east end of Galveston Island.

"We spent three months engaged in conversations trying to get them (to allow us) to lay the pipeline across the beach," de Schaun said.

The condominium association bylaws require all condo owners to approve any project that runs across their property, a goal that Park Board officials decided was an impassable obstacle.

"We thought it wasn't realistic to get 100 percent because there was already some pushback," de Schaun said.

Instead, officials decided to ask the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which issues permits for coastal construction, for approval to run the pipeline offshore in front of the condominiums and three other sections of beachfront private property. The Corps of Engineers OK'd the plans last week, enabling the beach project to go forward, de Schaun told the board.

The sand pipeline will run 6.4 miles from Big Reef to 61st Street and pour new sand on about 4 miles of beaches, from 12th to 61st streets.

The new sand will initially extend the beach's width to 300 to 350 yards, but wave action should eventually reduce it to between 100 and 150 yards, Park Board spokeswoman Mary Beth Bassett said. The project will take about five months to complete, she said.

The project is the third restoration of seawall beaches since 1995. Erosion continuously eats away at Galveston beaches, a problem affecting most of the Gulf Coast except for a few locations like Big Reef. The Park Board is investigating ways to use sand dredged by the Corps of Engineers to maintain Galveston beaches rather than embarking on a large, costly resanding project every few years, de Schaun said.

A $200,000 grant awarded under the state Coastal Erosion Planning and Response Act will enable the board to study the possibility of buying its own dredging equipment or laying a permanent pipeline to keep the beaches renourished, de Schaun said.

Last year, the Park Board used Corps of Engineers sand to build a new beach from 61st Street to about 75th Street, an area in front of the seawall where there had been no sand since at least 1960. The new beach, named Babe's Beach in honor of former Galveston legislator A.R. "Babe" Schwartz, has been heavily used.

The money to pay for the newest project is from an aborted $40 million beach renewal effort planned for the west end of Galveston Island, de Schaun said. The Texas General Land Office scotched the project in 2012, days before it was scheduled to begin, following a Texas Supreme Court decision that arguably made beaches west of the seawall private. The Land Office reasoned that the Texas Constitution prohibited the use of public money for private benefit.

The Park Board voted in April 2013 to use the money to replenish seawall beaches, but it took years of navigating complex Federal Emergency Management Agency regulations before it became available.