NAVARRE BEACH — Santa Rosa County has received $1.76 million from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to replace sand on the beach that was washed away during Tropical Storm Debby last June.
Navarre Beach lost about 61,000 cubic yards of sand during the storm, Santa Rosa County Engineer Roger Blaylock said. The FEMA money will require about $600,000 in matching funds split evenly between the county and the state.
Santa Rosa started planning a new full beach restoration project last year that will begin at the end of this year or early next year. Rather than conduct an emergency renourishment project, Blaylock said the county is considering rolling that job into the full restoration project and using the FEMA money to help offset the $10.3 million cost.
The full renourishment project being planned will be about half the size and cost of the initial beach restoration work the county completed in 2006.
“We’re not having to build new dunes,” Blaylock said. “The 14½-foot dunes are still intact. It’s just the seaward beach has eroded away, which is what it was designed to do.”
Navarre Beach also lost sand during Hurricane Isaac last August. The county applied last month for $764,000 in disaster assistance elated to Isaac.
“We look forward to getting a timely response from FEMA relative to Hurricane Isaac and then discussing it with the board about the timing of our renourishment project and using these funds to offset the major project,” Blaylock said.
County Commissioners will have to decide how they want to move forward with the job. The county’s consulting team has already begun the permitting work for the full project and plans will have to be developed.
One of the biggest hurdles will be figuring out how to fund it.
The 2006 beach restoration project added 3.4 million cubic yards of sand to 3.7 miles of Navarre Beach. It cost about $21 million, with the state funding $12.6 million. Navarre Beach leaseholders paid about $7 million through a municipal services benefit unit and the county funded slightly more than $1.5 million.
Blaylock said the Florida Department of Environmental Protection has told the county that it will not to fund as much of the project as in 2006.
The city of Destin also has applied to FEMA for disaster assistance funds from Hurricane Isaac to recoup the added cost of its recently completed beach restoration project on Holiday Isle.
The project was originally expected to cost $6.77 million, but Isaac eroded the beach further. Additional sand was needed to complete the work, which added $700,000 to the bill. The final cost was $7.5 million.
“We haven’t heard back from FEMA,” said Lindey Chabot, Destin’s grants and projects manager. “We assume that it will be approved, but we don’t know that yet.”
Walton County did not have enough erosion to ask for help from FEMA, said county spokesman Louis Svehla.
Contact Daily News Business Editor Dusty Ricketts at 850-315-4448 or dricketts@nwfdailynews.com. Follow him on Twitter @DustyRnwfdn.