What About Flagler Beach’s One Hold-Out Against Dune Fix? County Says December Deadline Will Be Met.

They weren’t making a New Year’s Eve date. Meade was asking Hadeed the question that has been on the mind of Flagler Beach residents, businesses and officials, wondering if and when the deadline will be met, allowing the long-delayed U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ dune renourishment project to go forward. The Corps would rebuild 2.6 miles of dunes from South 6th street south, along the segment of State Road A1A chronically ravaged by storms, as it was again by Hurricane Nicole last week.

This is the project for which the federal government and the county secured $17.5 million for four years ago, the project the Flagler County Commission agreed to more than three years ago. The federal share was $11.37 million. The county’s share was $6.12 million. The county secured the money through state grants. See the breakdown here. (An earlier version of this article incorrectly reported the federal share as $17.5 million.)

But for the project to go forward, the county had to secure easements from almost 150 property owners along the stretch–not to take property, but merely to allow the Corps of Engineers to work on the properties, to dump sand there and rebuild the dunes. The work would in essence protect A1A and the homes and businesses on the west side of A1A.




The county has been seeking those easements for almost three years, almost losing out on the Corps deal as it battled few holdouts. Desperate residents raised money to encourage holdouts to give way, and succeeded with several of them. But the Corps was losing patience. It issued ultimatums, threatening to pull the funding and send it where it’d be used. It repeatedly extended the deadline.

By last February, the hold-outs were down to one: Cynthia D’Angiolini, 71, who lives in a small house at 2538 South Oceanshore Boulevard.

She’s held out despite county and Flagler Beach officials warning that the beaches were vulnerable to destruction, as erosion had continued to carve out the dunes since Hurricanes Matthew and Irma. There is no question that had the Corps rebuilt the dunes ahead of Hurricanes Irma and Nicole, the damage to A1A would have been either non-existent or minimal, compared to what took place last week.

“The dunes mitigate the force of any storm, that’s their function,” Hadeed said. “So they would have mitigated substantially. Would it have been 100 percent? There’s no way to know.”




The county has been threatening eminent domain proceedings for two years. It hasn’t filed anything in court. Still, D’Angiolini is holding out. A week ago, Hadeed surveyed the county’s coastline with County Engineer Faith al-Khatib, documenting Nicole’s destruction and saying that it could have been avoided. On Monday, both were at the special meeting of the Flagler Beach City Commission, listening to DOT District 5 Secretary John Tyler boasting about the completion of A1A repairs in a matter of days but also saying that repeating the same old reconstruction won’t do.

That was the preface to Meade’s questioning thumbs up: for the Army Corps project to go ahead, it needs the D’Angiolini easement signed by December 31, so contracts can be let by April, so dredging of brown sand from an off-shore borrow pit can begin and dunes can start rising in June. But the project will now need more than twice as much sand as originally projected, and the cost will far exceed the $25 million price tag of 2018. How much more? It’s not yet clear. This is clearer: Miss that Dec. 31 deadline, and the project may well be dead.

Hadeed said the deadline will be met. “I’m confident that we should have an easement by December 31,” he said. “I think that ultimately, the owner, who has lived here in this community a long time, will do the right thing, will do the right thing to protect that owner’s property as well as the property of the owners’ neighbors and the community at large.”




The county is “not in court, but we are in eminent domain, we’re in the part of the statute where it is independent of the court in resolving the issue,” Hadeed said, describing it as a formal process that attempts to reach a resolution. The two sides could use a mediator. They chose not to. The process has been ongoing since the appraisals of the property in question were completed. Hadeed said he is not allowed to talk about what takes place in the process itself. The appraisals are part of the process, so he could not say what the land was valued at.

But it is now clear that the negotiations include the county making a monetary offer to d’Angionini to gain her approval. The county will pay her money “if that were part of the settlement,” Hadeed said, as it did not have to regarding other land owners (except those who got “incentives” from the volunteer group). How much? “Statute makes that all confidential,” Hadeed said, at least during negotiations. Once the two sides reach a settlement, the numbers will be revealed.

If the county loses the Army Corps of Engineers’ project, “there’s nothing for that owner,” no monetary benefit, Hadeed said. Al-Khatib went further: “If FDOT within a month, they came in with a different recommendation, we don’t need her anymore. We’re done. It depends on what the task force will decide on how to proceed.” Al-Khatib was referring to a multi-agency task force Tyler was forming to devise more permanent solutions to A1A’s viability. That could mean a sea wall. If that were the case, it would replace beach renourishment.

“We have no clue what the end result will be. But that means everybody will be looking at different solutions within the project limits,” al-Khatib said.




If the renourishment project goes ahead, those 2.6 miles of beach will be federalized. That means two essential certainties (to the extent that anything along A1A will be certain in the next decades, which is not much): the Corps of Engineers will be committed to renourishing the beach every decade or so, but shouldering only half the cost, committing Flagler County to pay for the other half, or to find the money to pay for it. The county has no idea how or whether it will have that money. The second certainty is that should a hurricane or a strong storm damage the 2.6 miles of beach, then the federal government will shoulder the full cost of reparations for the duration of the project’s life, currently set at 50 years. It would have done so in the wake of Nicole’s damage had the dunes already been built, replacing all lost sands at no cost to Flagler.

But all those assumptions, however set in stone, do not take account of the sea rise expected during that same time span–a foot by 2050, more in subsequent years.

The county already has approval to increase the quantity of sand to be dredged from 700,000 cubic yards to 1.3 million cubic yards. But that was before Ian and Nicole. Al-Khatib said the amounts will have to be increased yet again.

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