This paper describes the works carried out in an emergency recovery on the Macumba beach in Rio de Janeiro/RJ. The degradation of the area started after the El Niño and La Niña effects in previous years, caused a strong change in the sea currents regime, leading to excessive beach sand removal, and causing damages to the buildings along the beach in 2017. A protection and erosion control structure was installed as an emergency measure. The structure was constructed with layers of geotextile tubes on top of a concrete geotextile mattress. The tubes were made of woven geotextile fabric filled with colloidal grout, while the matresses were made of woven and non-woven geotextile fabric filled with sand or grout. The construction was divided in 3 sections along the beach. For every section, geotextile mattresses were laid at different elevations, and the technical specifications of these mattresses varied as a function of elevation and geometry of the beach in that section. At the end of the implementation of the synthetic structure, a backfill was constructed, reestablishing the beach aesthetics. The successful emergency construction, which took a period of 6 months to be completed, guarantees a stable structure for the hydraulic energy that will be imposed by a new sea swell event, as well as geotechnical stability. A definite solution for the Macumba Beach must include an extension of the canal on the west of the beach to the sea, as well as restoration of the sediment dynamics at the shore, with an enlargement of the beach.
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