- April 17, 2024
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Until Hurricane Matthew carved chunks of pavement out of State Road A1A in 2016, Flagler County had largely been spared from major storm surge damage to its shoreline.
But even so, experts told county commissioners at a Feb. 7 workshop, the county’s dune system and beaches have been gradually eroded, and existing and planned beach nourishment programs that would cover a few miles each will not be enough to protect it.
"The beach is a living thing: It's very dynamic, and it does require maintenance as you move forward."
—CHRIS CREED, Olsen Associates Coastal Engineering
“Other than these projects, the county does not have a long-term plan, County Engineer Faith Alkhatib said at the workshop.
Flagler County hired Jacksonville-based engineering firm Olsen Associates Coastal Engineering last year to come up with options for a comprehensive beach management plan — which Flagler, unlike many other coastal counties, doesn’t yet have.
Until recent years, Commissioner Greg Hansen said, the county hadn’t felt the need for one.
“We have been spared the ravages of hurricanes here in Flagler County, but unfortunately, with Irma and Matthew, now we got whacked pretty good,” he said, “and we’ve lost our dunes.”
The workshop featured presentations by Olsen Associates engineer Chris Creed and Army Corps of Engineers Project Manager Jason Harrah, with Creed leading commissioners though a technical discussion of the state of the county’s beach and dune system and a series of renourishment options before Harrah discussed the Corps of Engineers’ planned project in Flagler Beach, and the potential to add a second such project in the future.
Overall, Creed said, the county can expect to spend close to $97 million to protect the entirety of the shoreline. That could be annualized to approximately $6.3 million per year — a figure, he added, that’s in line with what other coastal communities are spending.
“The beach is a living thing: It’s very dynamic, and it does require maintenance as you move forward,” Creed said. “Just like in the federal project, you have an initial restoration, you have periodic maintenance that’s not unlike any other civil works project that you might have — a road, a highway, a bridge.”
Planned projects include a $25 million Army Corps of Engineers plan to renourish 2.6 miles of the coast in Flagler Beach; a Florida Department of Transportation-funded plan for $10.5 million worth of dune restoration nearby in Flagler Beach; a $3.8 million Department of Environmental Protection project to restore dunes in Gamble Rogers State Park; and a FEMA project in northern Flagler County, with $2 million from FEMA and $339,000 from the state with an equal match from the county government. Those projects are funded, though not yet underway.
The county government has also already restored about 11 miles of dunes damaged by Hurricane Dorian.
But, like the rest of the county’s 18 miles of coastline, those dunes have since been damaged by erosion and nor’easters.
Olsen Associates took aerial photographs of the entirety of the county’s coastline to measure the beach, dune and dune crest.
The average dune crest elevation in the county is about 18.5 feet, Creed said, with lower elevations in the north. Some of that’s from storms, he said, but some of it’s just due to natural elevation.
The DEP, since 1972, has maintained a series of measurement tools placed every 1,000 feet around the state’s coastline to track dune changes, Creed said.
“Between the northern part of Hammock Beach, we’ve seen a pretty good drop in the dune crest elevation ... likely due to the storms,” he said. In most of he rest of the county, the elevation has varied over the course of a few feet.
But there have been more noticeable drops in dune volume, he said.
"The majority of the beaches around the coasts of Florida are mandmade, and folks don't realize that."
— JASON HARRAH, Army Corps of Engineers
“The more volume you have, the more protected you are,” he said. “... Over the last 50 years ... there has been has been quite a bit of loss to the central part of the county.”
In some areas, 14 cubic yard of sand per foot have been lost, and the county has lost 3.5 million cubic yards of sand since 1972 — over 1 million of that in that last decade.
“It is the beach that protects your dunes,” Creed said. “If you don’t have a healthy beach, you can put all the sand you want to on the dunes, but if it doesn’t have the fronting protected beach, it is very vulnerable.”
In some places, Creed said, the dune crest also shifted landward — as much as 100 feet in some places, he said.
Creed presented a series of six renourishment options involving different amounts of sand added to the beach and dune at different places, and from different potential sources.
The nature of the county’s shoreline complicates the renourishment process: Part of the northern end of the county’s coast has submerged coquina rock that provides habitat for fish and other organisms.
A renourishment program could damage that habitat or inundate it with sand. The county could still decide to accept that damage, but would have to mitigate the impact, which would be costly — about $1.5 to $4 million per acre, Creed said.
Alternatively, it could add less land in those areas, but would then have to renourish them more often.
Meanwhile, the planned Army Corps of Engineers renourishmnent program is expected to soon move forward — and there could be a second one, Harrah said.
“The majority of the beaches around the coast of Florida are manmade, and folks don’t realize that,” Harrah said. “For the Corps, our mission is to protect property, protect life, protect infrastructure.”
An Army Corps study about a potential second renourishment site, he said, would take about three years and cost about $3 million.
A handful of residents spoke during the workshop’s public comment period, most urging the county to adopt a more comprehensive beach management plan or to undertake spot repairs in particular areas.
Colleen White, representing the Hammock Dunes Owners Association, said that Hammock Dunes had hired Olsen Associates to assess a portion of damaged in a nor’easter this past November. The community is preparing to undertake emergency repairs based on the firm's assessment, she said.
“This repair will be just a bandaid that we hope will get us through the next storm without a breach,” she said. “Much more repair is needed. ... Every storm that hits continues to tear away at our depleted dunes.”
Olsen will be drafting and submitting a report, Alkhatib said.
“We have to decide how we want to proceed,” Alkhatib said. “I do recommend, as soon as we can, to identify a task force to start working on these issues.”
Commissioner Greg Hansen suggested that the county hire a second county engineer.
The county has already looked into that.
"I have been asking for this position the last 10 years," Alkhatib said. "... We need a full-time member to be working on this on a daily basis."
