FL - Sand to be dredged, pumped onto Volusia County beaches as part of $82.7M recovery help
Volusia County beaches will get a big helping of sand with two projects over the next couple of years, and a long-term planning effort for the beaches will launch soon.
The state of Florida made $82.7 million available to the county through the Florida Department of Environmental Protection to strengthen the coast after tropical storms Ian and Nicole struck in 2022. That includes $5 million that the FDEP awarded the county in 2022 for emergency sand placement. Those funds came at the direction of Gov. Ron DeSantis after he visited Volusia County's damaged coastline following the storms.
Those storms, combined with seasonal nor'easters that followed, chewed away well over 6 million cubic yards of sand from the coastline. While the new projects won't bring that back, they will replenish about 1.25 million cubic yards of sand to Volusia County beaches.
County officials have launched a webpage to provide updates on the projects at volusia.org/sandprojects.
The two upcoming projects will separately focus on areas north and south of the Ponce Inlet.
What the coastline looks like will depend largely on how many beachfront property owners give the county access through a temporary easement, county Coastal Division Director Jessica Fentress said.
"If somebody doesn't provide me an easement, they're not getting sand," she said.
County officials also will soon start talking about crafting a long-term vision for the county's coastline and how to pay for it, Fentress said.
Here's a look at what residents can expect in the months ahead.
North sand placement project
The county plans to place about 700,000 cubic yards of sand north of the Ponce de Leon Inlet, and the county expects work to begin as early as the winter of 2024.
The sand will be dredged from the inlet and the Intracoastal Waterway to keep those areas navigable for watercraft.
The Army Corps of Engineers plans to pump dredged sand through a pipe "over the North Jetty north just past the Beach Street vehicular beach approach" and store the sand between that approach and the Oceanview beach approach in Ponce de Leon Inlet.
"Basically if you imagine like a vacuum hose that has a big screw on the end of it, they just kind of keep running this screw into the sand so that it liquifies the sand, and then it pumps that liquified sand into a pipe," Fentress said.
