- July 11, 2025
While the Flagler County Commission debates on how it is funding its beach management program, county staff are attempting to iron out how the work will get done.
Commissioner Greg Hansen, who represents Flagler County residents living in the Hammock area, is working alongside staff to figure out how Reach III will be reconstructed. Reach III stretches from just north of Varn Park to the southern limit of Washington Oaks Gardens State Park, encompassing Hammock Dunes, Ocean Hammock, Hammock Beach and Sea Colony’s shorelines.
The process is expensive. Permitting and design for Reach III is paid for already, at $1.5 million, through grants from post-Hurricanes Ian and Nicole, according to the Flagler County website. This stage is currently underway, Hansen said. Initial construction costs are estimated to be $49.8 million with funding of approximately $15 Million in Florida Department of Environmental Protection grants pending. The long-term maintenance costs for Reach III are projected to be $7.5 million per year, without any outside funding to support it.
“The piece that is hard is coming up with a constant flow [of money],” Hansen said. “We have to put money away every year into an account that can't be touched."
Reach III’s unique shoreline with exposed hardbottom rock means the money might not stretch as far as it does in other areas.
“In Flagler Beach we have 100 feet of beach and a 40 foot dune and it's beautiful,” Hansen said. “That’s what we want to build.”
But that may not be realistic. Hansen said the FDEP has to decide whether the county can dredge and cover the exposed hardbottom sand - saving the county a lot of money in the process - or if the county will need to leave the hardbottom exposed and truck in sand around it. How much of a beach is built up will depend on whether the county can dredge or needs to truck, Hansen said.
Ideally, the county would like the Army Corps to come study and replenish the beaches. But the Army Corps requires the beaches it works on to have public access every half-mile, which is another challenge.
This 5.5-mile stretch of Reach III is only partly accessible to the public at Old Salt Park and Mala Compra Park. The rest of the beaches are privately-owned accesses, though the beaches themselves are public - people just have to park at a public access point and walk along the beach to get to them.
The county has officially asked the Army Corps to come study the beach, but that could take four years, Hansen said. Without the Army Corps, the county needs to figure out its way forward.
In the meantime, Hansen said the county is working to get the easements to be able to work on the private sections. Hammock Dunes and Ocean Hammock are completed, he said, and the county is working with the Hammock Beach Golf Resort & Spa to square away both the easements and a public access point on the property. The county still has to work with the private owners in Sea Colony.
Last time the county had to get easements from individual property owners for the Army Corps project, there were almost a dozen people refusing to sign the easements, a delay that lasted years. Hansen said he thinks there will be fewer people holding out this time, but the county is going forward regardless.
“We're doing it now, so we don't care,” Hansen said. “If they don't sign, we just skip them. No dune in front of their house.”
