Hurricane Matthew washed away dunes and vegetation along Flagler Beach, and now the goal is to figure out how to rebuild. City, county, state and federal officials on Wednesday came together in a closed meeting to throw around ideas on how to fix the environmental state of the beach. Some of the ideas include dune restoration and replanting vegetation, which works as a protection from people on the beach side. “A lot of those things help protect the citizens, and you have a lot of breaches right now … that need to be fixed,” Flagler Beach City Manager Larry Newsom said. Coquina rock and sand are both being brought in by the truckload as a temporary fix to protect the beach. Barnhill isn’t a fan of that plan, though. He favors a long-term seawall or similar structure. “The storms themselves cause interaction with large waves, cause the grinding away of the dune, the grinding away of the road, and they’re a serious danger,” Barnhill said. Officials are looking at a number of different things to determine a long-term solution. “They’re looking at some type of potential hardening, which many involve some type of vertical wall that will still remain if the dunes happen to get washed away in a storm,” Newsom said. Beach access to fix the dunes is a challenge because Hurricane Matthew destroyed several walkovers. The current plan is to maintain the parts of the dunes and light vegetation still in place.
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