- December 4, 2025
As part of the Stormwater Master Plan to improve flood-prone areas, Flagler County is working on a project to improve the water capacity of the MalaCompra Canal in The Hammock.
MalaCompra Canal runs west to east along Mala Compra Road and has a drainage basin that reaches from Bay Drive to Jungle Hut Road, an area of just over 2 square miles. The improvement project will include replacing the box culvert underneath State Road A1A at MalaCompra Road and widening and deepening the canal itself, county engineer Hamid Tabassian said in a phone interview with the Observer.
"The primary project objective is to reduce the severity and the duration of the flooding," he said.
The culvert and canal are undersized right now, Tabassian said, and during 100-year storm events the canal floods by 26 inches with excess water, covering MalaCompra Road as the canal backs up.
“The water on the canal rises, and with that, all those neighborhoods, they don't flush out as easily,” he said.
This has to do with how the canal drains into the Intracoastal Waterway, he said.
During large storm events, when sea levels rise with storm surge, so too does the Intracoastal’s water levels, he said. If the water level gets too high, the flow of the water reverses, sending water from the Intracoastal into the MalaCompra basin and flooding the areas east of the Intracoastal Waterway.
Not only does the excess water flood the area, but it will also sit for several days until the water is able to drain. The improvements to the canal will help increase water storage and help prevent flooding during 100-year events, he said.
Flagler County is putting together a public workshop to connect with and educate The Hammock community about the MalaCompra improvement project. The workshop meeting will take place at the Hammock Community Center on MalaCompra Road in either September or October, he said.
“Those areas really depend on having a maintained canal along,” Tabassian said.
A firm is working on the project’s design now, Tabassian said, though that won’t be finished until next year. The improvements are likely to cost around $8 million altogether, though the county won’t have a more accurate estimate until the design portion of the project is completed, he said.
The county has funded the design portion using $800,000 in grant funding Flagler County received from the American Rescue Plan Act grant. Looking forward to the construction phase, Flagler County is not waiting for the design portion to finish before putting together funding for the next phase, starting with applying for grant funding.
Tabaissan said staff at the county are putting together a grant application for the Florida Department of Transportation’s resiliency grant funding. The grant application closes at the end of August and the county must demonstrate the problem, its impacts and the estimated cost of the project.
While staff works on finding funding and the results of the design phase, Tabassian said the county is working to maintain the canal in the meantime by regularly clearing out debris that gets stuck in the canal.
The MalaCompra project is not the only one on the county’s radar, either, he said. The area north of Marineland around Washington Oaks State Park is also prone to flooding, he said, and even closed S.R. A1A after Hurricanes Ian and Nicole hit in 2022 and flood waters covered the road.
Though maintenance for that area is under the jurisdiction of the state, not the county, Tabaissan said the county ensures it is on FDOT’s radar.
“FDOT knows that's a problem,” he said, “but we keep, at every meeting, at every turn, we bring it to their attention that it needs to be taken care of so we don't have this problem.”
