Posted on October 25, 2016
By Jake Martin, The St. Augustine Record
Oceanfront homeowners in St. Johns County looking to put a little more cushion between their back doors and the Atlantic Ocean may be in luck.
The County Commission on Tuesday tackled items related to beach renourishment and restoration from South Ponte Vedra Beach to Vilano Beach and as far south as Summer Haven. On the table were some tweaks to existing, funded projects in order to address more immediate problems in areas heavily affected by Hurricane Matthew’s water and winds.
County officials say temporary and permanent solutions are coming together with some flexibility from state and federal agencies, including the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, Florida Inland Navigation District and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Commissioners unanimously approved continuing coordination with regulatory agencies to possibly redirect some sand from an upcoming dredge of the ebb shoal near the St. Augustine Inlet to points along State Road A1A in the county’s northern coastal corridor.
The St. Augustine Beach Shore Protection Plan, headed by the corps and permitted by FDEP, was originally intended to renourish about 0.8 miles of beach in Anastasia State Park and another 1.9 miles in St. Augustine Beach. There have been three such renourishments to date, most recently in 2012.
The plan now is to put the sand meant for the uninhabited, publicly owned Anastasia State Park behind private homes on the north beaches where residents say a pre-existing critical need has only worsened due to storm erosion.
Darrell Locklear, assistant county administrator of operational services, said the already-funded project was set to begin by mid-November.
County Administrator Michael Wanchick said they are requesting the $15 million project be accelerated, as revised, and for the corps and FDEP to absorb the county’s 11 percent share of the cost. The corps was already on the hook for 80.5 percent while FDEP was pitching in 8.5 percent.
The county’s role will be obtaining the necessary permitting and temporary construction easements from private property owners in order to place the sand. But, as of Tuesday, a specific target area for that sand had not yet been identified.
“We will have to have consensus and sign-off from those private property owners, individually, for this to occur and to occur successfully,” Locklear said.
Meanwhile, Wanchick acknowledged sand placement was not a long-term fix.
“It’s the most viable solution we have available right now that could be quickly delivered within the next month to protect those homes until an interim or a more permanent solution is identified,” he said.
Locklear said even with amenability from multiple regulatory agencies, finding an effective solution that complies with several layers of bureaucracy was still a fluid situation and nothing could be guaranteed. In the meantime, community groups representing area property owners have a seat at the table.
“I believe we’re doing everything we can to respond to the critical need that’s there in the Vilano area,” he said. “There are additional measures that we are working on that I do not have complete answers on yet because they’re forming as I speak.”
Linda Chambless, vice president for the South Ponte Vedra-Vilano Beach Preservation Association, said the county has been responsive but wanted to clarify that the affected area encompasses all of South Ponte Vedra, all the way down to Porpoise Point in Vilano.
“Be aware the affected area in South Ponte Vedra is twice as long, lengthwise, mile-wise, than the affected area in Vilano,” she said. “I think it’s actually more than twice.”
She said she hoped some “horrible, horrible, horrible temporary seawall issues” would be resolved.
While there seemed to be little debate a continuous seawall would offer protection, bringing such a project to fruition would be an expensive undertaking, to say nothing of state and federal laws preventing construction of seawalls to protect undeveloped lots and prohibiting destruction of nesting habitats for endangered sea turtles.
One Vilano Beach resident requested county staff investigate any flexibility in terms of cost-sharing for a seawall, referencing 60-foot rights of way owned by the county in the north beaches area as well as 10-foot easements every fifth lot in South Ponte Vedra.
Another area resident said while there’s “only about 749 oceanfront homes” from South Ponte Vedra to Vilano Beach, it’s still an “important area to the viability of our community” boasting an “enormous tax base.”
But determining who will pay for what is just one piece of a confounding puzzle. Residents also stressed a need for government involvement or design of a wall under one master plan, saying time was of the essence for temporary and permanent measures alike.
Not everyone was on board, however.
St. Johns resident Ellen Whitmer asked commissioners not to “subsidize” structures constructed so close to the beach.
“They know it’s unsustainable,” she said, adding there are implications not just for taxpayer dollars but insurance rates as well.
Whitmer expressed some sympathy but said “you don’t have to build on the beach.”
Before voting in favor of continuing efforts to redirect sand behind homes on the north beaches, Commissioner Bill McClure echoed some of Whitmer’s concerns. Particularly, he questioned how much consensus there would be once homeowners talked with their insurers about what effect any government intervention would have on their policies.
“That’s an unintended consequence,” McClure said.
Wanchick said it “may or may not work out for everyone at the end of the day,” but that it was the only viable solution on the table that could be put into effect almost immediately.
“It will erode fairly quickly, but maybe it buys us a window of opportunity that the situation can be addressed in the long term,” he said. On the issue of insurance, he said “I guess falling in the ocean would affect your rates as well.”
Officials said possibilities and challenges abounded while asking for patience as interagency complications are sorted out.
Locklear said FDEP is allowing for temporary armory in areas including the north beaches and Summer Haven. He said residents can call Building Services at 904-827-6800 to see what can and cannot be done and that some FDEP officials will be temporarily housed within the department to facilitate rapid response to questions.
Ebb and flow
Tuesday’s conversation between the county and members of the SPVVB Preservation Association was markedly different from the one just two weeks before Matthew, quite literally, changed the landscape with Category 3 strength.
Commissioners on Sept. 20 voted unanimously to continue supporting the renourishment project in St. Augustine Beach while encouraging the association not to file a petition against the corps, and, subsequently, the project.
(At the Oct. 4 County Commission meeting, three days prior to the hurricane, Wanchick said the association agreed not to file the petition, opting instead to cooperate with the county in finding a resolution.)
Association leaders at the Sept. 20 meeting said beaches to the north of the St. Augustine Inlet weren’t getting enough attention from local, state and federal agencies and that too much sand from dredging was going to the south beaches at their expense. St. Augustine Beach officials said they were afraid a petition would derail an ongoing project they believed to be positive thing for the city, and, therefore, the county, largely out of spite.
The association asked for the project to be delayed.
“They can apply for the funds the following year,” Chambless said. “It’s just that they would lose it for 2017 and there’s no guarantee they’d get it in 2017 anyway.”
Undine George, vice mayor of St. Augustine Beach, begged to differ, telling commissioners she did not want to see renourishment activities in her city jeopardized because of another project she said had a “completely different set of circumstances.”
Jason Harrah, project manager for the corps, told commissioners they would lose the funding if a legal challenge were filed.
“That’s a guarantee,” he said. “Once you lose those funds, when subsequent years’ funds become available, they’re very, very hard to get.”
Neal Shinkre, public works director for the county, had estimated it would be another two to three years before a substantial project to the north could take place. He said the county, as sponsor, already contributed $2 million toward a feasibility study (still in progress) for the north beaches.
“Until the project is authorized, it is not like the project we have to the south,” he said. “That project went through all those feasibilities.”
County officials at the time expressed concerns with minimal public access to beaches in the north, creating the need to obtain temporary construction easements from private property owners. Due largely to the lack of public access, officials said the project’s funding score would also come in less than that for St. Augustine Beach (with about 20 percent rather than 80 percent of funding coming from the corps).
On top of that, Commissioner Rachael Bennett referenced engineering challenges in moving sand to the north that were different from moving it to the south. Although voicing support for a fix for the north beaches earlier in that meeting, she did not mince her words regarding the association’s stated intentions.
“For a group of people to file a petition specifically to stop a project, that damages so much of our county, is self-serving,” she said. “We cannot put the sand to the north anyway. We cannot do it. I don’t know what filing a petition serves. It doesn’t serve the greater good, it doesn’t serve the interest of the county, it doesn’t serve, in the long run, anybody, including the people filing the petition because it appears it’s being done out of spite.”
But it was Bennett, on Tuesday, who made the case for looking at the big picture.
Bennett, a board member for the North Florida Transportation Planning Organization, said she asked officials about A1A in Flagler County, which “for all intents and purposes” is gone due to the storm.
“Even if they had permits tomorrow, it’s a $40 million project,” she said.
She said there are certain areas in St. Johns County where A1A is “extremely close” to the ocean and where the only thing between the Atlantic and the state highway are “some of those houses that desperately need bulkheads.”
“I would like us to take a larger view,” Bennett continued, saying there’s nowhere else to go.
The back-and-forth between the county and association is nothing new.
According to its website, the SPVVB Preservation Association is a nonprofit founded in 2006 by oceanfront homeowners who “became increasingly alarmed about the sudden episode of extreme and devastating erosion, unlike anything that had ever been observed by long-term residents.”
In an overview, the association outlines instances in which problems created by critical erosion were exacerbated by the many bureaucratic hoops that members had to jump through (if they were permitted to do anything at all).
“Since we weren’t allowed to adequately protect our property, we undertook to find the causes and possible remedies for our erosion problems,” the overview says.
The association references some parallels its engineers found between “massive dredgings” of the ebb shoal near the St. Augustine Inlet and worsening erosion to the north beaches.
“While our suspicions were vehemently denied by the Army Corps of Engineers, the County, and of course by those in St. Augustine Beach, it was shortly after these dredgings that the giant hole began to re-fill and our beaches experienced the dramatic erosion,” the overview continues. “We remained convinced that there was a correlation.”
Summer Haven
Commissioners unanimously approved a temporary construction easement of county-owned lots to the St. Augustine Port, Waterway & Beach District for completion of the Summer Haven river restoration project. The easement will allow placement of sand from the river and use of the land as storage for construction equipment.
County staff said the project, largely funded by a grant from FDEP, was and remains fully funded by outside sources with no county monies involved. The contractor, Taylor Engineering, was willing to expedite the work and mobilize as early as this week if plans and permits were all in place. A representative from the firm estimated work would be completed within six months after the start date.
Officials said “nothing fundamentally changed” about the project except for having to maneuver around breaches caused by the storm, which created barriers to getting the work done as originally planned.
Wanchick said while some pockets of Summer Haven cleaned up pretty well, with 4×4 access established to many houses, other pockets, particularly to the south, did not fare as favorably.
He said the berm and the road were “completely destroyed” and that two new inlets had been cut, one of which appeared under a home. Many areas along the beach are only accessible at low tide.
“We’re going to have to work on that, to stabilize that area, but we are uncertain as to the future of south Summer Haven as we sit here today,” he said.
Additionally, a rezoning request for 0.7 acres in Summer Haven from Commercial Highway Tourist to Residential, in order to make way for two single-family units, was opened and continued to the board’s Nov. 15 meeting.
The subject property is located primarily on the east side of A1A South and west of Old A1A, and less than 2,000 feet north of the Flagler County line.
The county’s Planning and Zoning Agency recommended approval of the rezoning request by a 4-1 vote at its June 2 meeting. At the time, the subject property included a block to the south that would have accommodated a third home.
Source: staugustine.com
