- March 12, 2025
After months of buildup, the Flagler County Board of County Commissioners approved on Monday a contract with Holmberg Technologies Inc. that allows the company to move forward with a feasibility study for beach preservation efforts along the county’s coastline.
The approval marked the final step in approving the $50,000 study funded by the county’s Tourist Development Council. The contract was approved by the TDC in October and by the City of Flagler Beach Commission last week.
Now, Dick Holmberg, president of Holmberg Technologies Inc., has 30 days to begin his study and present a plan for implementation of low profile undercurrent stabilizers, a technology he developed, in Flagler Beach.
Holmberg’s system would place a series of geotextile tubes perpendicular to the shore, angled downward to create a gradual slope along the face of the sandbar. The technology is meant to lighten the impact of waves beating on the beach, allowing sand to accumulate.
Holmberg said erosion happens when a current or wave hits a shoreline with enough energy to lift sand and carry it away. A natural beach has a gradually sloped leading to the shoreline, which prevents waves from hitting beaches so hard. The slope naturally slows waves, he said.
But human activities — like dredging and excavation — have upset the naturally gentle gradient leading to beaches, he said.
“In a natural beach, you wouldn’t even have sand bars,” he said. “The ocean’s surface would be flat because water would be moving slowly as it went uphill.”
His undercurrent stabilizers would recreate that uphill gradient, he said, gradually allowing sand to collect as waves brought it into shore. He said he’s successfully implemented this technology on more than 100 beaches.
The stabilizers allow more sand to collect and are hydraulically designed to rise with the rising sand level, he said. Eventually, this would restore the beach to its former size.
Holmberg’s solution is presented as an alternative to a feasibility study currently being conducted by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Results of this study are expected by February and could qualify Flagler County for federal funding for preservation efforts.
Army Corps solutions always include dredging, said Kim Carney, a Flagler Beach commissioner.
Holmberg argues that creating more troughs and channels along the beach will exacerbate the problem, because sand moves with gravity, and therefore, would only end up falling into these dredged channels.
Carney said she supports Holmberg’s technique over dredging because it’s more sustainable than dredging and avoids the creation of an armored beach using seawalls or groynes.
The Florida Department of Transportation installed a seawall along the stretch of State Road A1A in front of the Topaz Hotel almost a decade ago in a $1.2 million project. It later added a rock revetment, and in 2011, proposed another $6 million seawall along the road.
This solution would protect State Road A1A but would allow the beach to erode until the water line was at the seawall along the road — an undesirable solution for a county whose economy depends on tourists who visit its beaches, Carney said.
Critics of Holmberg’s plan question its effectiveness on Florida’s beaches. Although Holmberg has been commissioned for other beach restoration projects, none of them have been within the state.
“I’m not against Holmberg or the technique, but I have a lot of questions,” said Palm Coast City Councilman Frank Meeker, who sat on the TDC during preliminary discussions about Holmberg’s proposed solution for beach erosion. “My problem is that I don’t think we have enough detailed, peer-reviewed studies on the subject, and that’s what I’d like to see.”
Meeker said he asked Holmberg for this information, as well as information about how his system could withstand a moderate- to high-energy wave environment, but received no reply.
“From the reading I’ve done on this, I don’t think this is the right technology,” he said.
But detailed studies aren’t available, Carny said, because restoration efforts in Flagler Beach would be Holmberg’s first publically funded project.
After Holmberg begins his feasibility study, he has 90 days to complete it and present a plan, including the cost of its implementation, to the boards involved.
Milissa Holland, a Flagler County Commissioner and the chair of the TDC, said approving Holmberg’s study was appealing because it will bring more options to the conversation about how to save Flagler’s beaches.
And because the study will be funded by the TDC’s beach restoration fund, there isn’t much else they could do with it, Holland said.
Other projects this fund has paid for include boardwalks and parking lots around the beach, but there are strict rules about how the money, which comes from tourism dollars, can be used, Holland said.
“This isn’t in direct conflict to the Army Corps feasibility study,” she said. “It’s a parallel avenue for us to explore the best way to move forward.”
