- November 18, 2024
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Flagler County hopes to hire a private consultant to start the design phase for the Army Corps of Engineers beach renourishment project in Flagler Beach.
“We’re ready to start going with the design phase fairly soon, almost immediately,” County Manager Craig Coffey said in a County Commission workshop May 20.
“We’re going to try to control that rather than do that through the Army Corps. We’re going to try to do it privately,” Coffey said. “We think we can really speed up the design phase by doing that ourselves, by hiring a consultant rather than going through Army Corps of Engineers.
That would let the county move forward with design before the Army Corps has finished all of the details associated with the study, which might not be until November 2014.
Congress won’t approve any construction funding until the design phase is completed.
Design is expected to cost less than $1 million, Coffey said, and the county has already approached the Florida Department of Transportation for grants.
“Right now they’re willing to put up half a million dollars, and we’ll take half a million dollars out of our beach restoration fund … That will give us credit for approximately half a million with the Army Corps,” he said.
Commissioner McLaughlin asked Coffey if the county is locked into the Army Corps plan.
“Is there any alternative to doing Army Corps?” he said. “Because it seems to me, you do what they say, or they’re not going to permit anything else anyway. Is that a correct assumption on my part, or no?”
“Correct,” Coffey said, “And there’s sharing of cost, too… You could pursue another project on your own if you want to 100% fund it, pursue it, and it may be another project that they actually permit.”
But the Army Corps plan deals with only one of four stretches of eroded beach, Coffey said. For the other reaches, “Anyone that wants to do another alternative methodology, go for it. Go get it permitted, go to the Corps, fund the darn thing, put it in the water, let’s see if it works.”
Commissioner Frank Meeker agreed. “If it works, if it’s something different and it works, you’ll be a hero,” he said.
