Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale,
A tale of a fateful trip.
It started from our state’s First Coast,
Aboard a tiny ship…
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. In lieu of rough weather, a sweltering northeast Florida sun, unblanketed by cloud cover, illuminated a wakeless ship route for The Osprey on a late-August afternoon boat tour. Her fearless crew consists of coastal engineers, project managers, environmental experts, economists, and representatives from various echelons of government.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ (USACE) Jacksonville District helms the voyage as Skipper, navigating its Intracoastal Waterway to provide a unique, in-person perspective on locations where they, in collaboration with their stakeholder shipmates, are researching the most feasible ways to protect America’s oldest city against coastal flooding.
The Skipper was the Army Corps,
Their motto “essayons”,
Seven stops to gaze upon,
On this three-hour tour, this three-hour tour.
The study area encompasses the City of St. Augustine’s municipal boundary, rife with residential dwellings, commercial businesses, significant historic and cultural areas, as well as wetlands, waterways, fish, and wildlife resources.
“We invited our environmental and cultural sub-teams to join us for this boat tour to provide a unique perspective of the study area from the water, and to encourage and inspire new ideas, comments and recommendations for our initial array of alternatives,” explained Katie Lebow, a National Environmental Protection Act NEPA Biologist, and cultural sub-team lead for the St. Augustine Back Bay Coastal Storm Risk Management project.
The USACE, when weighing options to safeguard the over 17 distinct neighborhoods, including environmental justice areas, three separate land masses and the entire municipal boundary of the City of St. Augustine, is considering a wide variety of options, and combinations of alternatives.
This comprehensive approach is aimed at achieving optimal results for the residents of St. Augustine and the many tourists that pass through. Both support the economy of the coastal gem where Floridians go to staycation, and visitors flock from across the United States, and many parts of the world.
“The initial array of alternatives includes a buffet of structural, non-structural and natural and nature-based feature-focused engineering solutions that could be used independently or in tandem to address future flooding in the nation’s oldest city”, continued Lebow. “We’re bringing in our trusted partners and stakeholders to consult on the best option for the future of flood protection in the City of St. Augustine”.
Structural options like floodwalls and levees arrest flooding at the back bay shoreline. Surge barriers and gates block flooding before it gets into the back bay waters. Interior drainage features divert flooding away from upland areas.
Non-structural options range from elevating homes and properties at risk of coastal flooding to floodproofing property in precarious proximity to historically heavily inundated areas. Within the study area, 4,700 residential structures could benefit from elevation, while an estimated 3,300 public or commercial structures may benefit from floodproofing.
As an ever-evolving engineering enterprise, the USACE also explores natural or nature-based features to supplement or in some cases, solely safeguard against coastal flooding.
“The purposeful restoration of coastal marshes, the planting of seagrasses and strategic sand-placement in dunes provide storm damage risk reduction benefits, while providing habitats for various species of insect, bird and mammal,” paraphrased Coastal Engineer, Elisabeth Godsey, from the International Guidelines on Natural and Nature-Based Features for Flood Risk Management, a Bible of sorts in her field of expertise. “Nature-based solutions often simultaneously create or improve opportunities for tourism and recreation, support healthy fisheries and aid in climate mitigation,” she continued. These features, including oyster reefs, elevated marsh areas and mangroves reduce flood risk without directly affecting flooding processes.
The charter sailed swimmingly up the San Sebastian River to the King Street Bridge before making its way back around the Davis Shores Peninsula into Salt Run and past the St. Augustine Inlet into the Tolomato River. Throughout the voyage, buoyed by lively dialogue over a shared vision, the USACE team and crew conversed.
The ship set ground on a boat ramp on St. Auggie’s for a while,
With the Army Corps,
The City too,
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA),
The US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS)
The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS),
The Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT)
The Fish and Wildlife Commission (FWC),
The Guana Tolomato Matanzas National Estuarine Research Reserve (GTMNERR)
And The Matanzas Riverkeeper too,
Here on Essayons Isle.
“This partnership between the City and the Corps [and all the agencies that are here today] is critical,” noted J.B. Miller, Land Management Coordinator for the City of St. Augustine, the study’s non-federal sponsor and bearer of 50% of the financial responsibility of the study and its future construction efforts. “You have a lot of people that have never seen what we just saw today from the water. You can drive around all you want, but you must see it the way we did to fully appreciate it,” he said. “Tomorrow, we’ll discuss cultural resource issues and environmental issues and what might make some alternatives more viable and preferable than others, and we’ll have a lot of valuable input from a lot of very passionate people here to lend to the discussion”.
Miller’s sentiments were echoed by Jessica Beach, Chief Resiliency Officer and Deputy Director of Utilities and Public Works for the City of St. Augustine.
“I think for us as the local/non-federal sponsor, [the takeaway is] that collaboration is key to the success of this study,” said Beach. “We are learning from other experts and other CSRM studies, what has worked or what can be improved, and we value everyone’s input, time, and expertise. I think at the essence of it, we all want to do what we can for the Nation’s Oldest City and make it resilient in the face of the challenges that lay ahead”.
The comments and recommendations the USACE receives from agency partners and stakeholders will be discussed in a separate working group on dry land, and considered for what could be incorporated or adapted during the Alternative Analysis and Evaluation phase. “By bringing in the experts, we are doing everything we can to provide the best possible array of alternatives for evaluation during the study,” said Jason Harrah, Senior Project Manager at the Jacksonville District. “From there, we will work towards a recommended plan, and having early and frequent communication with our agency and stakeholder partners sets us up for a smoother consultation and coordination process at the end of the study,” he noted.
This evaluation will entail cost estimates, potential benefits, resource impacts, and risk considerations for various design elevations for all features under consideration. That evaluation will be used to screen out certain features and then the remaining features will be combined to establish a final array of unique city-wide alternatives by summer2025. The final array of alternatives will undergo additional evaluation and coordination to determine a Tentatively Selected Plan (TSP). The TSP will be described in a Draft Feasibility Report and NEPA Document that will receive formal public and agency reviews in the spring of 2027.
The study is anticipated to conclude with a Chief of Engineers Report signing in September 2028 that will recommend a plan for reducing coastal storm risk in St. Augustine to Congress for the authorization to commence construction.
So join us here next time my friends,
The wait is worth the while,
For Coastal Storm Risk Management,
Here on "Essayons Isle."
For more news, updates and information visit the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Jacksonville District district’s website at www.saj.usace.army.mil, on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/Jacksonvilledistrict, and on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/JaxStrong.