- May 3, 2024
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The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has a released a study of Flagler County’s beaches and has proposed adding additional sand — about enough to fill 88 Olympic size swimming pools — to fight erosion along the county’s coastline.
Total project cost: $43,465,000 over 50 years.
The cost of the project would be shared, with $23,852,050 falling to the federal government.
Of the 9.7 miles of beach the Army Corps' investigated in its feasibility study for the renourishment plan, 6.15 are within Flagler Beach. Another 1.14 miles are in Beverly Beach and 1.74 miles are in Painters Hill. The Army Corps' tentatively selected plan would renourish 2.6 miles.
To fight the erosion that has narrowed the area’s beaches down to a pale sliver, the Corps plans to “borrow” sand dredged up from a source seven miles offshore, in federal waters, according to the study.
The sand would then be dumped onto the beach, and crews would come in afterward to replant squashed dune vegetation.
Flagler Beach Commissioner Kim Carney wasn't convinced dumping sand on the beach would solve the problem.
"I just think it’s a temporary fix," she said. "With the first storm, it’s going to wash away, and they know it.”
She also worried, she said, about the environmental impact of the dredging and dumping process itself.
"With any dredging project, they have to do a take permit, because something in the environment is going to be destroyed," she said.
The project would move forward as Federal Hurricane and Storm Damage Reduction measures, although much of the county’s erosion, according to the report, is a result of natural shoreline processes, not storms. The storms that cause the most damage have tended not to be hurricanes or tropical storms but winter northeasters, which usually bring damaging waves and storm surges for longer periods of time.
But even without major storms pulling the county’s sand into the ocean, the erosion is serious: The Florida Department of Environmental Protection designated six areas of the county’s coast, first investigated in a 2004 report, as “critically eroded” in 2009.
Two of those stretches of beach no longer meet the criteria for designation as “critically eroded” — erosion severe enough that it threatens upland development, recreation, wildlife habitat or important cultural resources — because sand was deposited along the beaches naturally after the 2009 report.
Erosion in the remaining four sections of coastline, though, threatens Oceanshore Boulevard and 1,476 structures along the beach, according to the report. Together, that infrastructure is worth about $340 million, and Oceanshore Boulevard is a critical hurricane-evacuation route.
Investigation for the report, released Jan. 16 and viewable on the Flagler County website, CLICK HERE, began in 2003.
BOX: Tell the Army Corps what you think:
The Army Corps of Engineers, Jacksonville District has asked the public to review and comment on the draft Flagler County Hurricane and Storm Damage Reduction Study.
The comment period is 30 days. It began Jan. 18 and will end Feb. 17.
Copies of the report are online on the Flagler County and Flagler Beach websites, and in the Flagler County and Flagler Beach libraries and Flagler Beach City Hall.
To view the report on the Flagler County website, visit http://www.flaglercounty.org/ArchiveCenter/ViewFile/Item/3417.
Residents can send comments to [email protected] or by mail to: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Jacksonville District, Attn: Kathleen McConnell (CESAJ-PD-EC), 701 San Marco Boulevard, Jacksonville, FL 32207.
There will be a public meeting on the report at a later date.
More information is available at https://saj.usace.afpims.mil/Missions/CivilWorks/ ShoreProtection/FlaglerCounty.aspx.
An earlier version of this story misstated the length of beach that would be renourished in the Army Corps of Engineers' tentatively selected plan. The correct length is 2.6 miles.
