Posted on January 31, 2019
A $20-million-plus effort to restore protective berms along Flagler County’s coastline, one of the longest and most multifaceted projects in the county’s history, entered its home stretch this month.
Work crews have mounted a steady march south along the shoreline for the past year, dumping more than 750,000 tons of sand to patch up Flagler’s battered dune line, which was devastated by hurricanes Matthew and Irma in 2016 and 2017, respectively.
On Jan. 10, those crews finished crafting dunes in Beverly Beach — the project’s southern end. Varn Park, a popular beach access point that was shut down for equipment staging in November, has been reopened.
Now comes the tricky part. Crews backtracked to the county’s northern border to refortify sand along the 1.6-mile stretch of oceanfront between the River-To-Sea Preserve and Washington Oaks Gardens State Park. That section includes a treacherous mile-long segment near the Matanzas Shores subdivision — about a mile north of Washington Oaks Gardens — where huge coquina boulders embedded in the sand protrude from the surf.
County officials hope the terrain will not pose too much of a threat to the dump trucks that crews have used to shift sand onto the beach. But they do expect some wear and tear on equipment.
“We’ve still got some tough areas,” former county administrator Craig Coffey said during a Jan. 3 interview with The News-Journal. “Matanzas Shores will be a tough area … They have a couple long boardwalks and that’s going to be a challenge for us, going around the boardwalks and over all the rocks. Trying to figure out how to put in a protective barrier and install boardwalks in those areas will be interesting.”
The project rolls on despite the departure of Coffey, who resigned earlier this month rather than face termination.
[READ: Flagler commission votes to accept Coffey’s resignation]
Navigating the rocky landscape represents the last span of an 11-mile stretch north of Flagler Beach where county officials have focused on refortifying emergency berms with between six to 10 cubic yards of sand. Meanwhile, EarthBalance, an ecological company the county hired to plant vegetation on the finished dunes, has sown sea oats along at least six miles.
Project under budget
Flagler officials expect the final price tag to come in well under the original $28.3-million budget, of which Flagler had promised $10.7 million in matching funds. The Federal Emergency Management Agency was to kick in $5.5 million and the Florida Department of Environmental Protection pledged the remaining $12.1 million.
Original bids accounted for nearly a mile of public shoreline surrounding the Flagler Beach Pier, which the county planned to refortify. That area has now been incorporated into a long-term $99-million U.S. Army Corps of Engineers project that had been scrapped. But after the federal government earmarked $17.5 million for the Corps renourishment in July, local officials placed it back on the table.
Coffey said he thinks the cost for sand will also be cheaper than originally estimated and predicted the county’s overall tab will be between $20 million and $25 million.
“We are so happy, so excited for the outcome of this project, considering that this is a very unique project to Flagler County,” Flagler County Engineer Faith Alkhatib said. “I think this is one of the first projects in the state to be done with in-house forces. Almost 11½ miles of coast line to be done in-house — that’s a lot.”
The massive project has, in a sense, come full circle. The construction phase began Jan. 22, 2018 at Washington Oaks Gardens State Park. The federal government supplied funding for the dunes to protect the state park, as well as a small strip that buffers the River-To-Sea-Preserve oceanfront park two miles to the north.
Now the county is contending with the coastal area between the two public parks.
Still trucking
Flagler’s 18-mile dune line was decimated by Hurricane Matthew in October 2016 and sustained even more damage 11 months later when Hurricane Irma followed up in September 2017.
Roger Cullinane’s oceanfront home near Jungle Hut Road park in The Hammock was damaged after water breached the dune in front of his property and came onto his lot. Luckily, it never reached his house.
The Army Corps re-nourishment project involves periodically dredging sand from a site seven miles offshore to rectify berms in Flagler Beach over a 50-year span. Cullinane said he hopes Flagler can acquire permitting for dredging from the same pit to maintain the county’s dune line.
“That’s the only way to really do it,” he said. “We feel safer having the dune restored. But my understanding is it’s somewhat of a sacrificial restoration because a big storm like that would do it again.”
Frustrated by bureaucratic red tape, high costs for sand and stringent environmental regulations — all of which served as roadblocks in 2017 — county officials resolved to use a 10-person crew from the roads and bridges division of the Public Works department to build the dunes. And with that, an in-house brigade of Flagler County employees that ordinarily repave roads, fix pot holes and unclog drainage ditches was given the task of repairing the county’s protective sand berms.
It’s a move that officials expect will save the county at least 30 percent of the cost of hiring outside contractors.
“For folks that usually build roads and bridges, they’ve been superstars,” Coffey said of the county’s work crews. “Our goal has been a mile a month and we’ve fallen off that a little bit. But the equipment’s really affected that. Overall, they’ve done a tremendous job and they’re catching back up. The crews are learning as they go on how to do things better.”
Gone are the crawler trucks that the county deployed throughout most of 2018. Flagler instead leased six Prinoth Panther rotating dump trucks, according to county officials. The vehicles could climb the dunes and carry a capacity of nearly 30,000 pounds of sand each load. But the crawlers were prone to mechanical breakdowns that often kept at least one or two out of commission.
When the lease for those vehicles ended in December, the county switched to Bell B25E tractors, larger dump trucks capable of carrying loads up to 48,000 pounds. The wheel trucks cost more per hour, but the increased load capacity means the county does not need as many.
“Just the wear and tear on equipment because it’s rough on equipment on the beach,” said Billy Dawson, a roads and bridges manager who’s worked projects in Flagler for 31 years.
Everything in place
The race against the clock is all but over. Last year, the county worked through hurricane season and was at the mercy of any other storm that could have undone all the work completed at that point. Crews also worked around the state’s turtle nesting season — May 1 through Oct. 31 — and were handcuffed by environmental restrictions that required the relocation of all nests that could be impacted by the work.
The county plans to be substantially finished in March and completely off the beach by May 1. That would allow about a month for the dunes to harden before hurricane season begins June 1, and even longer before the brunt of this year’s hurricane season arrives, officials said.
The project also has survived the loss of Coffey, who served as a primary catalyst to help the county reach this point. Coffey resigned Jan. 9, days before county commissioners were expected to vote on whether to terminate him. He said during his Jan. 3 interview with The News-Journal that the dunes effort had reached a point where “everything is in place” and he expected it to continue smoothly.
“It’s not the pyramids of Egypt, but I think we’ve built something,” Coffey said. “Unfortunately, it could all wash away with a big event. But they’re (the dunes) designed to sacrifice themselves if attacked. So you’re going to buy time. Instead of eight hours of flooding — or 10 hours or two days of flooding — you may just have some topple affect. So it might just result in a lot less damage to a lot less people.”
Source: The Daytona Beach News-Journal
