The City’s Decision—Was it Based on Facts?

FROM: the Save Flagler’s Beach Committee

To paraphrase The Music Man’s Professor Harold Hill, “either Commissioner John Feind is closing his eyes to a situation he does not wish to acknowledge, or he is unaware of the caliber of disaster indicated by the presence of coastal engineers in our community.”

His reasons, cited in the News-Journal on February 28, for rejecting a one-mile demonstration project of Holmberg Technologies’ Undercurrent Stabilizer systems (with record of hundreds of successful projects) in favor of one by the Beach Restoration, Inc., (with exactly one project, failed) are disingenuous at best.

“To aid us with our selection process,” Mr. Feind wrote, “the city hired the coastal engineering firm of Halcrow HPA,” and “Halcrow presented a professional and objective report.”

Here’s what Mr. Feind calls “objective”: Halcrow personnel visited no Holmberg sites, not even the single one by BRI, only 90 minutes’ drive from their office. Instead, they used their $52,000 fee—paid by the City of Flagler Beach—to make phone calls and meet with BRI executives.

Its presentation consisted of a re-hash of information the citizens group Save Flagler’s Beach had presented to the commissioners months before. And listen to this: Halcrow did not reveal to the commission that it had given a favorable report on Holmberg Technologies to a town in England, nor that it had nevertheless recommended its own breakwater project, which caused massive damage down-current. Read about this by clicking HERE.

Mr. Feind, who is asking Flagler Beach voters to give him another two years as a city commissioner, cited Mr. Holmberg’s “apparent lack of cooperation…even with our consultant agreeing to sign a non-disclosure agreement,” his “failure to meet with FDOT, one of the permitting agencies,” his “failure to participate in two innovative beach solution seminars held by FDEP,” and “similar lack of cooperation” elsewhere.

Mr. Holmberg, whose Undercurrent Stabilizers have for 35 years been shown to regenerate beaches, has been invited by citizens groups up and down the Eastern and Gulf coasts, and has made presentations and offered proposals time and time again, only to have the forces arrayed against him—beach nourishment associations, sales groups, paid academic consulting engineers, and political lobbyists—ride into town in the guise of “experts” to exert tremendous influences and pressure on local officials. No matter how lopsided popular support in favor of using his technology, he has been consistently denounced by those whose prime goal is to continue to profit from the billions of tax dollars wasted on beach renourishment projects.

Evidence of this can be seen in the very reports and websites Mr. Feind cites, and in his reliance on the words of these self-interested so-called experts. This is particularly baffling, since Mr. Feind stated recently in a public “meet the candidates” forum that, owing to a misguided vote on another city project, he would never again make the mistake of heeding the advice of experts.

The truth is that Mr. Holmberg spoke at length with the Halcrow consultant, refusing to divulge only the construction techniques at the heart of the system’s success. His meeting with FDOT (NOT, incidentally, a permitting agency) was cancelled by FDOT and not rescheduled. And his technologies were fully presented at the FDEP’s 1994 workshops, at which time many successful examples of his work were shown. All of this was known to Mr. Feind.

His statement that the Army Corps of Engineers “expressed serious concerns that a ‘hard’ structure would not receive the necessary permits” is true. This threat is one of their major weapons against Undercurrent Stabilizers. But it is the design and construction that determines a structure’s “hardness.” Holmberg’s concrete structures are seen as “soft” by incoming waves and their results are positive and beneficial. So-called “soft” measures like BRI’s sand-tube groinfield have been shown to cause erosion. The “soft” method favored by the Corps, beach nourishment, has been shown to cause more erosion than any other method. All this was demonstrated to the commissioners.

Finally, Mr. Feind complained that Mr. Holmberg asked $50,000 for “proposal submittal only.” On the contrary, having already estimated that the demonstration project would cost no more than $2.5 million, Holmberg Technologies was asked by Save Flagler’s Beach to submit a “Proposal for Preliminary Analysis” so the city could get the project started.

This was to include a preliminary shoreline analysis, initial site selection, photographs and measurements, preliminary calculations and engineering assessments, research for availability and cost of materials, labor, and equipment, and consultations with police and other agencies regarding traffic routing and control and other logistics, and would have taken two people 10 days on site and another two weeks to continue research and prepare the report.

The cost of this analysis would have been folded into the total project cost, unlike Halcrow’s $52,000 which purchased nothing of value and is over and above BRI’s estimated $2.5 million (a figure unknown to the commission, by the way, until after it voted to proceed with them), and exactly the same amount Mr. Holmberg’s system would cost—an amazing coincidence, don’t you think?

Past Events?

Notes from previous events are posted here.

"Never doubt that a small group of committed citizens can change the world...
Indeed
it is the only thing that ever has."
Margaret Mead