Where has the beach gone north of the Flagler Beach pier?
It was a familiar sight six years ago when Hurricane Matthew’s surge sheared off colossal segments of sand from Flagler’s shore. But there’s been no storms to do this to the beach from the Flagler Beach pier north, for several blocks. There’s been no tropical storm, no Nor’easter, no severe storms. Just tides. Now the beach is all but gone, leaving nothing between waves and cliffs at high tide.
Waves lap at sheer cliffs that drop off from what’s left of a stretch of sand along the boardwalk. That’s still there, covered in vegetation. But then it’s just a drop of 6 to 8 feet below, making it difficult or impossible for beachgoers to lounge by the surf, and making it difficult for them to get to the sands at low tides, because of the cliffs.
It’s a similar scene at around 13th and 14th Street South. “There is no beach for a whole entire block from half of 13th south to half of 14th south. The water is all the way up to the rocks. There is no beach to be had,” Flagler Beach mayor Suzie Johnston said. “I have seen these cliffs created in the past but they were never as far up the dune as they are right now. And that’s what has me worried, is we’re to a point where the erosion is a six-foot drop or more, and it’s almost to where the vegetation is, and every wave that hits the beach is taking more and more sand away. And this is without a storm without super high tides.”
The Flagler Beach City Commission has called an emergency meeting for Wednesday at 9 a.m. to discuss the situation. The development is adding urgency to beach-renourishment projects slated for next year for both sides of the pier. But those aren’t beginning until next June, with three months left in hurricane season. One of those projects is the Army Corps of Engineers’ dune-rebuildiong of 2.6 miles from South 6th to South 28th Street. The other is a county-led project from South 6th up to about North 20th, and from South 28th to the Volusia County line.
Al Hadeed, the county attorney who continues to steer both projects through their successions of Scylla and Charybdis–and a behind-the-scenes architect of numerous environmental protection initiatives that bear the county’s stamp–was on the beach for four hours today, surveying the erosion. The county’s engineering department is involved, and on Tuesday, the county will take drone footage of the erosion.
“The beach has been experiencing erosion for quite some time and we have noticed it, it’s very apparent,” Hadeed said. “What we’re seeing however are particularly significant erosion events where we’re now getting escarpments.” In the area of the North 200 block, the North 300 block, “the ocean has peeled it away, and now it’s a cliff. Where the sand volume is above the escarpment, it’s particularly at risk because it no longer has the structural stability to resist the erosive effect of ocean waters. When the dune is a berm that goes out and meets the ocean and is a gradual descent in the ocean, that kind of structure presents better resistance to strong waves. Also I noted that in the south 1400, 1500 blocks, the revetment that the Florida Department of Transportation installed, some of which was covered by sand, all of that sand has been washed out.”
The issue began emerging in late July as sand was getting washed out beneath the foot of the pier and the Funky Pelican. The city worried about the stability of the structure and the restaurant. City Manager William Whitson called in consultants from Moffat and Nichol, the Tampa-based engineering consulting firm, which visited the site on July 21.
At the time, the erosion was “localized to the base of the Pier and a few hundred feet to the north and south as erosion dissipates with distance away from the Pier,” according to a 19-page memo the consultants issued. It no longer is as localized.
The erosion spanned 100 feet at the base of the pier when the consultants visited: “The dune under the Pier had retreated landward of the fence a few feet, causing a three to five foot gap between the bottom of the fence/gates and the sand. [] The sand around the piles has eroded up to three to four feet below the bottom of the repair grout jackets (of the original Pier piles).” Consultants observed that finer gray sand was covering the orange coquina sand that usually covers the shore.
The consultants attributed the phenomenon to the moon’s closeness to Earth, coinciding with a full moon on July 13. “This combination of lunar occurrences causes higher high and lower low spring tides than normal, which was corroborated by anecdotal reports from the City,” the consultants found. Based on other data available to them, they detected higher eave heights than usual, and consequences from sand bars that push tides further up against the shore. But they don’t expect the stability of the pier to be affected, but were not definitive on that score: “We expect that piles should be deep enough; however, the pile tip elevations should be confirmed with historical records, if available,” they wrote.
That was all before the deeper erosion north of the pier and around 13th Street since.
“In all my years here, you hear people talk and they’re like, oh, this happens all the time,” Johnston says. “This is not happening all the time. I told the city manager we need to act like our hair is on fire. Because this is not normal for our beach. This is not normal erosion at the rate that it’s happening.”
A video taken by Carla Cline between 13th and 14th Street:
Carla Cline, the Flagler Beach business owner who also spearheaded a successful fund-raising drive to entice a few hold-out property owners to sign easements that would allow the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to rebuild 2.6 miles of beach south of the pier, lives near 13th Street and has been observing the ocean for the past 24 years, the last 10 taking sunrise pictures of the shore almost daily. She hears people say that sands come and go. But this, she says, is unusual.
“I have never seen the erosion that we’ve seen on the north side and South 14th,” Cline said today. “Definitely on the north side it’s is crazy looking. And then south 14th, it’s also pretty severely eroded only during major storms. We haven’t had anything of that.”
“This has been happening quite a bit all up and down the Florida coast,” said Airielle Cathers, a dive safety officer and maritime archeologist with the One reason why are the grant that we’re working on studies how major storms and hurricanes affect cultural resources. So this is on the minds of professionals in the field, but huge amounts of coastal erosion happening up and down the stage. I’m not exactly sure why this particular area is getting hit by
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers project, long delayed by hold-outs (who are down to a single property owner), will start in June, Hadeed said, and will then be followed by the county-led portions north and south of it. But the recent erosion means the projects will be more expensive.
Hadeed said the county is working with state and federal officials, examining need to bring “more sand than was originally estimated by the Army Corps when they did their initial beach profile and design studies. So we already know that we’re going to need to more than double the amount of sand we’ll need to achieve the design of the army corps of engineers.” Original estimates had been around 350,000 cubic yards of sand, which was to be dredged from a borrow pit several miles offshore. The county secured the permits to dredge more.
“The added sand volume is going to require more money, so we’re going to have to address that,” Hadeed said. The added sand itself will not increase the cost, but the labor and machinery will.
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Jimbo99 says
So all that $ 25 million to rebuild the dunes & whatever else was wasted money & effort. It’s just a matter of time before the Flagler County Peninsula becomes a sandbar. The gold mine that the beach has been for decades that anyone still alive can remember is being reclaimed by the Atlantic Ocean. Sometimes you have to let it go, it’s just bigger than mankind pushing back. The reality, those properties will become worthless eventually, it’s just a matter of who got stuck with the mortgages. Another Federal Government bailout is the only solution of a futile attempt to slow the inevitable.
Gayle Ford says
Actually our issue has been seen on the whole eastern coast- most counties and areas have had a proactive plan – we however have never had replenishment plan- we also have less than most artificial reefs which lesson the cost of sand replenishment-
Our city and county have ignored their stewardship and now we suffer through ignorance and wasteful cost
James says
Whoa! Flagler Beach… it’s gone! :O
jOE sTOLFI says
WAIT .. .. .. .. .. LETS FIX IT BY ADDING MORE SAND .. (And a no named storm) . lOL
oldtimer says
Nature makes us realize we DON’T control things
Marlene says
The problem in our city in my opinion, are the leaders. For 30 years we have had commissioners that should never have been reelected commissioners who are small minded and can’t see the big picture commissioners who vote According to the people who like them and who they like not the issues how many times has this city spent money only to find out that they made the wrong decision and had to spend money over and over again to fix a problem that they couldn’t fix how many times have we reelected ignorant Uneducated and biased commissioners think voters, what have they done that makes our city stand out the way it has the potential to Now we are faced with a devastation of the beach in a beach town reelecting these people would kind of be like reelecting need Youngblood we need people who think forward we need people who care about our city more than they care about themselves and if they’ll be reelected it’s been 30 years and I stillHear the same problems over and over again when are we gonna wake up and change things I was city is going down the same way our country is going to go if we don’t change it let’s wake up, Before we can’t be called Flagler BEACH!
JP says
I agree with much of what you said. But please, for god’s sake man, use some grammar. It’s hard to take your comments about someone else being uneducated seriously when you write 11 sentences strung together with only one comma and no periods.
CandiceB says
Huh Marlene? What do Commissioners have to do with the problem that is occurring on our beach? Ur comments seem to just run on and don’t make sense.
Michael OMeally says
The beach erosion was caused by the Nor’Easter in November. Followed by a small scale ecological disaster at Matanzas Inlet which required a $400,000 study. Some of these same studies have been repeated at Ponce Inlet, also near Guana Dam.
After the Nor’Easter it was about rebuilding the access to the beach, but everyone had to wait on the Saint John’s County sand study. Finding out how to move forward was important, it’s why you’re seeing a larger emphasis on sea walls over sand. After the emergency meetings are held I’m sure more answers will be provided.
I’ll be able to post photos of the storms, and the aftermath. Some of the rebuilding. I’ll make sure to do it in a Flagler tourism group on Facebook. But it really isn’t about trying to garner attention. This will be important for people to look at so they can understand what’s happening.
Shark says
The beaches are eroded just like the leadership !!!!!
Surfin Downer says
While we’ll spend millions upon millions to win battles along the shore, this is an unwinnable war. The Atlantic Ocean will be a foot higher in 20 years, which will effectively wash out all of the barrier to the intracoastal. In the meantime super tides will consistently warn us of that impending doom.
Now I know, I know. G’head and throw your feces. Woke whatever. Brandon’s fault. For me and my family, we’ve already bought our future oceanfront property over in Indian Trails.
Mark says
That’s about what I said when we bought in Indian Trails, 30 years we’ll have beach front property! LOL!
Flamingo Gary says
Actually in 30 years you will be stuck in the middle of the hood longing for your old neighborhood of yesteryear and wondering how this happened. I will stick with my saltwater home! LOL!
Jimbo99 says
Makes you wonder how futile a concrete pier for $ 12+ million to replace the current one is as a flawed concept for building for 2023. The pier is being exposed as being nothing more than a concrete dock since the erosion will certainly erode the final dune that actually supports the restaurants to the sidewalk & eventually A1A itself.
I say it’s flawed because as the erosion continues, conceptually it won’t be any different than a longer walk of a dock on the intracoastal. The difference, the intracoastal Matanzas River is not nearly as volatile to a dock as being directly on the Atlantic Ocean coastline is for a pier. The 1st real storm will be the same thing that happened to that concrete pier in Jacksonville Beach. The intracoastal has never had the wave size the Atlantic has, even inside the mouth of the Matanzas Inlet.
Going back to the holdouts to the Flagler Beach dune rebuild, anyone paying those people was wasting more money. If they don’t want to work with the rest of Flagler Beach, they needed to sell that property & move elsewhere.
Rick Belhumeur says
Wednesday, May 2, 2012 10 years ago
City OKs stabilizers in Flagler Beach.
In an effort to restore the seven miles of beach along State Road A1A, the Flagler Beach City Commission unanimously voted April 23 to employ Holmberg Technologies’ Undercurrent Stabilizer Systems, said to alter wave energy to naturally shift sand back onto the beach.
The Army Corp shot it down. Makes you wonder if they might have helped in this situation?
FlaglerLive says
The Holmberg item needs some context:
Robjr says
Holmberg may not have done any worse.
And the cost would have been a lot less.
PPK says
Those types of systems have worked all over. Flagler Beach would have been an ideal place for that type of (HTI) system back then, before the problem got to this level. These type of systems have been studied for decades. They have a small environmental footprint, and one or two systems can protect and restore large areas. They are safe for beach goers, and are permanent in that if a storm uncovers the systems, they immediately begin the accretion process again. Those accretion areas over the systems become feeder beaches for the upstream and downstream. Unlike hard structures, they are permeable – meaning the water and sediment can travel up and down. This is an important distinction because both upstream and downstream beaches benefit, unlike a groin where downstream side usually has severe deficits.
Brian Riehle says
This whole story needs some context.
The Atlantic Ocean is rising because of massive ice melt caused by global warming. And it’s going to keep getting worse.
And all of the emergency meetings about dredging sand aren’t going to stop it.
Surfgod says
In my opinion, based on 37 years of surfing and fishing in Flagler Beach, we rarely get a southerly current for as long as we have this summer. The abnormal current started in early June and has been flowing from south to north since then every day. This is counter to the normal direction of current and has been so constant that it is eroding at the lowest points of the beach just like a riverbank. I am hopeful that once the normal north to south flow is restored, most of the sand will shift back to fill in the low spots. Fingers crossed for now until we can get the re-nourishment started next year.
I was all in favor Holmberg stabilizers, something is better than nothing, which is what we have right now.
Ghistorian says
A valid point, but I don’t think the “normal” calculations for weather and water and air flows can be applied anymore. The equations are different due to the rapid onset of global warming and the subsequent ice melt. Normalcy is out the door at this point. Almanacs are useless to us now. Expect the unexpected for at least the remainder of our lifetimes.
ULTRA MAGA says
This a GIANT Problem! Stone Breakwaters have been used in states, but this option would be VERY EXPENSE in Florida because of the shipping costs of the Very Large Stones!
Tina Compton says
Only idiots think they can stop nature.
Victoria Harper says
Other places like Okinawa, Japan where erosion mean the end (Island), they protect from erosion and actually have successfully even expanded the island by placing HUGE concrete structures (similar in shape to our Jacks (remember the game with metal jacks and a ball) at the beach side to multiple layers and these massive things are layers high.. Yes, it will close the beach, but it stops erosion and fills in to form serious wall structures. String enough that building/roads/ etc can be placed later.
Howard says
Beware Hutson will purchase your county commissioners so they will allow his $$ to fix and then he’ll just develop it.
Bo says
I see a bunch of rich people commenting about sand that is gone. Donate your money and build the sand back up. Every three years repeat the cycle. Do nothing and everything will be gone.