- April 25, 2024
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The Flagler Beach City Commission opposes the sea wall project on A1A, proposed by the Department of Transportation, but is open to other options.
In an extended meeting Thursday, March 24, the Flagler Beach City Commission approved a resolution opposing the construction of the Florida Department of Transportation’s proposed four-mile steel sea wall on State Road A1A, between South 13th Street and South 14th Street. But that doesn’t mean one won’t be built.
The approved resolution confirms that Flagler Beach officials are unanimously against the construction of a wall and will work together to find a new alternative.
“We want more time to look at the resources — most being financial,” City Commissioner Kim Carney said. “(FDOT, the Department of Environmental Protection and Army Corps) all have a vested interested in the beach. We feel that we’ll be benefited better by bringing all three parties together.”
According to FDOT reports, the A1A sea wall is necessary to ensure an evacuation route and uphold the integrity of the currently eroding A1A Ocean Shore Scenic Highway and National Historic Byway. The project will run south of the existing wall located adjacent to South 13th Street, will feature a re-vegetation plan for the road shoulder, as well as dune restoration seaward of the wall.
“FDOT wants to keep A1A a viable road. (But) the solution that they’re leaning toward has already failed,” Carney said, referring to the partial wall and rock revetments currently installed.
Plus, Carney explained, the sea wall will, eventually, eliminate the beach. Sands will shift, be displaced and wash away, she said. “You’ll have ocean, wall. No beach … That is going to happen here. There is no disputing that fact. Everyone will admit it.”
Still, city officials acknowledge that A1A is in trouble. “It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out there’s also a beach erosion problem there — that’s what’s causing the road problem,” Carney said.
According to Carney, it seems it’s either build a wall to save the road, but lose the beach; or don’t erect a wall and save the beach, but lose the road. As of now, no happy medium has been reached.
“This wall will get longer and longer and longer and longer,” Carney said, citing plans for the wall to eventually extend down the entire length of Flagler Beach’s coastline. “And we’re talking millions and millions of dollars.”
The projected cost of the first stage of FDOT’s wall project is $6 million. Construction is set to begin November 2012.
At Thursday night’s Commission meeting, FDOT project manager Gene Varano told Flagler Beach officials that he wants to involve them in the process as much as they’d like to be involved, and that FDOT will not build the wall “behind their backs.”
“(The city is) his customer and he has to respect that,” Carney said. “We got their attention … that’s pretty much all we can ask for.”
