Posted on August 30, 2024
It was barely two months ago when U.S. Rep. Mike Waltz, the Republican whose six-county district includes all of Flagler County, was among the dozens of officials in Flagler Beach marking the groundbreaking of the 3.4-mile, $27 million beach renourishment project Flagler Beach had been waiting for almost 20 years.
At Flagler Beach City Manager Dale Martin’s invitation, Waltz was back this morning, taking a walk on the rickety pier this morning to see that project almost done. He could see the sharp contrast nearing North 7th Street, where the wide, thick beach tapers off to skinny remnants of rust-colored coquina sand. What used to be Flagler County’s distinction is now a diminished relic.
“Well, that was fast. I mean, we were just here,” Waltz said of the project’s speed. Contractor Weeks Marine is expected to complete dredging and dumping 1.3 million cubic yards of sand this week, a month ahead of schedule. That still leaves the majority of the county’s beaches exposed.
So just like Oliver Twist who goes up to Bumble the Beadle to ask for more gruel, Flagler County commissioners today asked Walz: “Please, sir, I want some more.”
More sand. Or more precisely, more help extending the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ federal project to what Flagler County officials are now calling the “northern 10,” the 10 miles north of the pier and south of Marineland that still stretch as thin as gruel, their sands depleted, their prospect for new beaches slim.
Luckily for local officials, Waltz is not as mean or disbelieving as Bumble. Although he opposes climate-change policies that would slow sea rise and offer a measure of beach protection,–“we will unleash American energy and flood the world with clean, cheap, American oil and gas. Drill, baby, drill! we will!,” he told the Republican National Convention a month ago–he listened to the officials, among them County Commission Chair Andy Dance and Commissioner Greg Hansen, who asked him to push for a federal study of the northern 10 that could make that stretch eligible for a new phase of beach renourishment.
“It’s crucial to have Congressman Waltz helping us at at the federal level, getting getting funds allocated to the beach,” Dance said. Hansen put it to the congressman more directly–more like Oliver, if in more details: “What we want you to take away is that we’ve got to go farther up,” Hansen told him. “The Corps of Engineer’s budget comes up to you guys all the time.”
“It’s a wrestling match,” Waltz cautioned.
“We currently need money in there, earmarked if you will, for us to finish the study to get them to come back and reevaluate, and if we can get them to do more of the beach going north, then it’s wonderful.”
Waltz was cautious throughout. No promises. “I don’t think that study is authorized,” he said.
It’s not. “That’s where we need your help,” Hansen said.
“Guys, we’re just getting this one done, and you’re like–” Waltz said, half-joking. The assembled, who included two Flagler Beach city commissioners and a third county commissioner, all laughed, but there was truth behind Waltz’s caution: these Army Corps studies move at an impossibly slow pace, measured in years, not months, and federal appropriations for environmental projects, especially in the GOP-controlled House of which Waltz is in the majority, are not guaranteed passage in a “drill, baby, drill” climate.
None of the local officials mentioned that the county, facing staunch opposition from Flagler Beach and Palm Coast, failed earlier this year to fund the full $7 million it sought for its beach-management plan. That plan is intended to build a substantial reserve, in the tens of millions of dollars, to pay for more renourishment in the “northern 10,” and to be prepared to pay the 50 percent share of the next federal renourishment of the beach project being completed this week when it’s due for another renourishment every 11 years. The county has signed a pledge to continue that cycle, and to pay for its share None of that money is available.
The county devised a plan that would have levied what amounts to a modest beach tax on most county residents to raise the $7 million. Palm Coast and Flagler Beach balked. The county is now working on a limited taxing district in the norther 10 miles portion of the barrier island, Petito said. The county is itself contributing $5 million to the fund in the coming budget year. Flagler Beach and Palm Coast are contributing nothing beyond what their taxpayers already send the county, except by way of tourism tax revenue, $2 million of which which is part of that $5 million. But a lot more will be necessary, especially since neither the federal government nor the state favor grants to local projects that do not provide a considerable match. (See: “For Flagler County, New Tax to Raise $7 Million a Year to Preserve Beaches Concedes Realities of Climate Change,” and “Flagler Beach Demolishes Any County Plan To Make Barrier Island Pay Higher Tax for Beach Protection.” An earlier version of this article incorrectly cited the amount the county was pledging at $3.5 million, rather than $5 million.)
Put another way, the county’s begging to Walt to federalize greater portions of the beach was a way to punt on local responsibilities, even though with a federalized beach, a local match would still be required. For the 3.2-mile stretch of beach the county got funded, it lucked out with entirely state and federal funding.
Martin invited the congressman to have a look at both the completion of the renourishment project and get a sense of the next project getting a “federal infusion of cash,” the $20 million demolition and reconstruction of the Flagler Beach Pier into an 800-foot long concrete structure standing 27 feet above sea level, to account for continuing sea rise. Contracts will be awarded in October. The demolition is expected to start in the fall, with completion expected in early 2026.
Among those accompanying the congressman to the pier were County Administrator Heidi Petito and members of her top staff, the elected, and County Attorney Al Hadeed, who has overseen the laborious legalities of securing all the necessary easements from private property owners along the length of the renourishment project to permit work on their properties. Waltz gazed at the project’s extent in both directions as bulldozers worked nearby, though the pipeline slurrying dredged sand to the live project zone stretched several blocks north, where contractor Weeks Marine’s workers have been at it 24 hours a day. The width of the beach around the pier is at its widest in decades. Waltz spoke with officials, posed for pictures and took a quick video selfie.
Last Saturday Dance, Hadeed and Flagler Beach Commission Chair Scott Spradley held an impromptu town hall for about 10 residents at the south end of town who had concerns that their beach is not growing like the stretches north of them. They were equally concerned that the secant seawall the state Department of Transportation is building at the south end of the county will diminish the beach over time. The three officials during the town hall explained that the federal and county portions of the renourishment did not cover the stretch lined by the seawall–still under construction–and that the wall itself would be covered by sand dunes, as it has been in completed portions, though the density of the sand will not be as great as the dunes lining the federal portion of the project.
