- April 24, 2024
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Dunes change.
They erode. They get new sand deposits. That's the course of nature.
When a storm hits, dunes are the first line of defense between the battering ocean waves and man-made infrastructure, and inevitably, take on damage as a result. Hurricane Ian was no exception, causing what county officials have reported as "significant and widespread" damage to Volusia's coast.
As Melissa Lammers, a local environmentalist, walked the stretch of beach near her Ormond-by-the-Sea home following the storm, she was shocked. The dunes that had slowly been coming back since Hurricane Matthews were now sharp cliffs, exposed saw palmetto roots splayed out for beachgoers to see. Much of the dunes vegetation was gone.
"I have never seen the beach eroded like this," Lammers said. "The Saturday morning tide and the Sunday morning tides came right up to the cliff. The high tides came right up to the edge."
Lammers is dedicated to advocating for the protection of the coastal environment. She serves on many boards and committees: She's vice chair of the ECHO Volusia Forever Alliance, member of the Volusia County's Environmental and Nautral Resources Committee, the League of Women Voters Natural Resources Committee, the Halifax River Audubon, the Environmental Council of Volusia and Flagler Counties and the Pawpaw Chapter of the Florida Native Plant Society. She also runs a Facebook group called North Peninsula Preservation where she works to educate people on the nature and history of Ormond-by-the-Sea. Her family moved to Ormond-by-the-Sea in 1965.
So Lammers certainly knows her dunes, and her beach — knows them enough to point out where the dunes used to rest pre-storm, and how the eroded sand has exposed pilings from old walkovers near her home.
"We had Matthews, then we had a Nor'easter, then we had Irma," recalled Lammers as she recently walked on the beach at low tide. "So that was three really big assaults on the beach erosion."
Since the storm, Volusia County has reported the coastal damage to be more significant than the damage sustained during Hurricane Matthew. How significant? The county is still working to determine that.
"Due to the widespread extent of the coastal damage we sustained, we are still in the assessment phases to accurately account for what assets can be repaired versus what must be completely rebuilt," the county said in a statement. "For example, we have 140 County walkovers and 90 of them were damaged or destroyed completely."
Because the county is still assessing damages, the statement added that the county cannot speak to estimated cost repairs. It is collaborating with FEMA, the Department of Environmental Protection and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to ensure replacements and repairs are done in accordance to federal, state and local regulations, as well as to maximize reimbursement.
Ben Bartlett, Volusia County public works director, said that DEP is in charge of all the permitting associated with beach repairs, including sea walls. Temporary repairs have been delegated to the county, but the scope is very narrow.
"Anything that they consider permanent, such as a deeper sheet pile wall with a proper cap on top, tie backs, large rock, boulders, coquina rock ... still has to be permitted through the DEP."
"I have never seen the beach eroded like this. The Saturday morning tide and the Sunday morning tides came right up to the cliff. The high tides came right up to the edge."
Melissa Lammers, Ormond-by-the-Sea resident and local environmentalist
Bartlett said that most of A1A that is county-maintained has homes and substantial dune system between it and the ocean, so the county wasn't anticipating any significant damage to the road like what occurred in Flagler Beach after Hurricane Matthew, where a stretch of A1A was washed away in the storm. But the county wasn't expecting the damage it did sustain to its sea walls and dune because Ian wasn't a direct hit.
"I think this was just a situation where the wind direction caused that surf to come in at a certain angle and build up to a certain point where it got over those sea walls and got behind them, and started washing them out," Bartlett said.
Flagler's coastal restoration since Hurricane Matthew has been complicated. Hurricane Ian's impact didn't help.
Part of its pier washed away. All beach walkovers were damaged. Dunes eroded.
In late August, the Army Corps of Engineers had announced that a beach renourishment project along a 2.6-mile stretch of Flagler Beach — from the north side of South 6th Street to the south side of South 28th Street — was slated to begin in June 2023, requiring twice as much sand as the Corps previously anticipated. The county was still working to secure the final easements required for the project to proceed, according to the Palm Coast Observer.
It's a project several years in the making. In 2020, the Corps were ready to move forward with the project, but the county had still not yet gotten all 141 beachfront property owners to sign easements that would let workers access the dunes. To date, one owner has yet to grant access.
On Sunday, Oct. 9, Corps Brigadier Gen. Daniel H. Hibner and engineers surveyed the beach erosion in Flagler County.
“Despite all the damage suffered in other areas in Florida and the fact that the people in those areas truly need our help and attention, we are not losing sight of what has happened here in Flagler County,” said Hibner at the end of the tour, according to a Flagler County news release. “There is importance in getting this project completed here, and we are going to get it done as quickly as possible.”
"Some of those dunes you want to get back because the dunes are the protection. We heard about what happened in Flagler. The dunes are the protection for those structures on the western side of the dunes, so there's probably some areas that will need some help. There's probably some areas that will come back on their own."
Ben Bartlett, Volusia County public works director
Flagler County additionally reported last week that the Florida Department of Transportation would soon begin a two-week rock revetment project along some critically-eroded segments of the shoreline along A1A between South 9th Street and South 23rd Street. FDOT will install coquina rock to match pre-storm conditions as part of the recovery from Ian, the news release stated.
Gov. Ron DeSantis toured Flagler's coast on Sunday, Oct. 16, as officials informed him that the county lost about 500,000 cubic yards of sand, estimated to cost between $35 million and $40 million to restore.
County Engineer Faith Alkhatib said to the governor that the majority of the county's dunes on 18 miles of coastline had been "completely destroyed."
"Many of our residents do not have any flooding protections for their homes against any future storms," Alkhatib said. "We don't have any flooding protection for the infrastructures too for our local roadways. We also do not have protections for A1A, which is a designated scenic highway."
Beach renourishment is an option Volusia County is looking at. Bartlett said that, once the county does an in-depth analysis of where the sand came and went, they can approach the Corps for a project to focus on some of the critical areas.
It comes down to funding, he added. The Corps is doing a survey of damages, but it's also not a quick process on their part.
Renourishment projects have occurred in the past in Volusia County, but not on a regular basis. Given enough time, some of the dunes will restore naturally, but there are things the county can do in the meantime to aid in that restoration, Bartlett said.
"Some of those dunes you want to get back because the dunes are the protection," he said. "We heard about what happened in Flagler. The dunes are the protection for those structures on the western side of the dunes, so there's probably some areas that will need some help. There's probably some areas that will come back on their own."
Lammers is uncertain about the future. The question on her mind is, "Will Volusia's beaches and dune structures have enough time and material to restore themselves before armoring the coast — building seawalls — becomes necessary?"
With A1A's proximity to the beach in Ormond-by-the-Sea and increased use of beaches — which includes people parking at the edge of dunes, or sometimes walking over them — dune vegetation has been impacted and therefore, less able to protect the dunes. She said it is time for the various governmental entities that have jurisdiction over the dunes or its surroundings to work together to strengthen dunes.
"The beach was starting to look good again," Lammers said. "It wasn't at all what it historically has been, but you could see that it was healing. We were getting the slope back, and now, if you asked me, this is Flagler Beach in the making."
