- April 25, 2024
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This year's Intracoastal Waterway cleanup volunteers cleaned up 709 pounds of trash — everything from discarded flip flops to a kite and an old stop sign — from the Intracoastal and nearby canals and trails.
The 2017 cleanup event was the city's tenth and took place on Nov. 4, later in the year than it usually does, City Administration Coordinator Denise Bevan said in a presentation at a City Council meeting Dec. 19.
The event usually takes place in September to coincide with International Coastal Cleanup day, but Hurricane Irma pushed it back.
The storm affected turnout: 357 volunteers registered, but many did not show up. This year's total amount of trash collected was also lower than in previous years, in which volunteers collected an average of 1,700 pounds of trash.
The event began and ended at Holland Park, concluding with awards for people who collected the most trash — one family collected more than 300 pounds — and the most unusual items. The stop sign won the most unusual item contest.
Sponsors contributed about $6,000 in contributions.
Palm Coast will be awarded a $275,000 federal emergency management grant to add a generator at City Hall. The city will match the grants at 25%. The project proposal is about $366,000.
"In this case we were eligible as a result of (Hurricane) Matthew," City Manager Jim Landon said. "We applied for a generator, a large generator for this building so that we could use this during the preparation and after the storm as our headquarters, kind of our emergency operations center."
The city has previously used Fire Station 25, but that gets "very tight very quickly," Landon said.
Palm Coast had included the entire cost of the generator in this year's budget, Landon said.
The city has applied for a grants for total of 30 generators — about $1.6 million worth of equipment and installation work, of which about $1.2 million would be paid by grants — many of them to power wastewater pumping stations.
The city has driven portable generators around to pumping stations to pump them down during previous storms and extended outages.
"This way we have permanent generators which we can kick on at all the sites, which really will help with overflow and issues back home with flushing toilets and things," Landon said.
The city hasn't gotten its formal final approval yet for those other generator grants, but has been told it's on the way, city Environmental Compliant Manager Brian Matthews said.
