August 8, 2006

FDOT Public Workshop

The Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) has scheduled a public workshop on August 8 at 5:30pm at the Santa Maria del Mar Social Hall, 801 North Central Avenue , Flagler Beach .

Your attendance at this workshop is crucial to our quest to save Flagler's Beach.   It is our first and most important opportunity to tell FDOT --- clearly, simply, and emphatically --- what we want and what we will not accept.
It is an opportunity we dare not miss.

The saga of our eroding beach is long and complicated. If you are interested in the history and details, all that information is available. This is the abridged version:  

• the beach has been steadily eroding to the point that A1A has actually been undercut;
  
• since 2000, FDOT has spent at least $8 million to "save" the road with dirt and rocks (revetment) and an $845,000 150' "temporary" sea wall;
  
• none of it has worked.
  
• FDOT has paid to have a study done, and the resulting "suggestion" is a 4.5 mile sea wall in Flagler County stretching northward from South 28th Street in Flagler Beach .
  
• FDOT's sphere of responsibility is the State road system - building it, maintaining it, and "saving" it when necessary.  Beaches, in and of themselves, do not fall within FDOT's perceived sphere.  In other words, their concern is "the road" and only "the road."
  
• From FDOT's perspective, a seawall is probably the quickest and
  easiest way to stabilize and "save" the road. The destructive effects of a seawall on the beach are not, in their opinion, part of their sphere of responsibility.
  
• A "feasibility study" is underway by the Army Corps of Engineers.
  Its purpose is to clear the way for a project to put dredged sand on
  the beach. This has no relation to FDOT's concerns. It also will not be completed for years and, even when it is, it is only the study. Nothing will have actually been done to save the beach when the study is completed.

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