Cape Canaveral resilience manager outlines flood‑mitigation projects Cocoa Beach could adopt

Zach Eichols, chief resilience manager and emergency operations coordinator for the city of Cape Canaveral, described a package of flood‑mitigation projects and emergency‑operations tools to Cocoa Beach meeting attendees, saying the measures help keep stormwater out of homes and improve recovery after storms.

Eichols briefed the meeting on sensor networks, green stormwater infrastructure, a permanent pump station and a living‑shoreline trial built to protect a sewage treatment basin. He said the projects were funded with a mix of grants and local funds and were designed to be scalable for nearby municipalities.

Eichols said Cape Canaveral installed seven remote street‑level sensors to provide hyperlocal, real‑time data to staff and emergency responders and that those data informed engineered projects along the city’s Presidential Streets. "We have seven now," Eichols said of the sensors, "and we can automatically see what's going on in real time and relay this information to our emergency responders." He described the sensors as inputs to a larger vulnerability assessment and master‑plan process.

He showed details of the Veterans Memorial Park "smart rain garden," which he said was funded through a $1,000,000 National Science Foundation grant; Eichols said roughly $400,000 of that grant paid for the garden itself and the remaining funds supported university research partnerships with the Florida Institute of Technology, Embry‑Riddle Aeronautical University and Stetson University. The garden, he said, now contains about 950 Florida‑native plants and holds about 150,000 gallons at maximum capacity. "We increased the capacity by about 30% and now it holds upwards of a 150,000 gallons of stormwater at maximum capacity," Eichols said, adding that sensors inside the garden report inflow and evapotranspiration metrics to researchers.

Eichols described a permanent pump, the Center Street Pump Station, that he said can move 6,000 gallons per minute to the Banana River Lagoon when urban rainfall fills the storm system and prevents gravity drainage. He emphasized the pump addresses urban‑rain flooding only, not storm surge driven by the lagoon: "If there's ever a storm surge where the water physically gets pushed into the city from the lagoon, this would not help because it would create the vicious cycle," he said.

He said the pump is off‑grid with an onboard generator and a 500‑gallon diesel tank, and that the city uses floats and remote controls to operate the system when required. Eichols said the first pump drained one basin dry in about 10 minutes after Hurricane Milton, and he described a second pump and tidal‑valve system planned for another flood‑prone ditch; he estimated the second pump project could cost about $3,000,000.

On shoreline protection, Eichols described a rapid deployment approach the city used near its water reclamation facility: granite rip‑rap together with precast "reef arches," modular marine‑grade concrete units that Eichols said are designed to capture sediment and accumulate marine life. "We were the first city to add a product called reef arches," Eichols said, noting the units were permitted under an emergency exemption and cost about $20,000 for the initial set of 10.

Eichols also described other resilience measures the city uses or is piloting: mobile battery energy storage units for a resilience hub, a Starlink satellite internet unit for communications when terrestrial lines fail, and a transition away from sandbags to deployable flood barriers and tiger dam systems. He said Embry‑Riddle conducted drone flights and LIDAR scanning that covered about 75% of the city to produce updated building elevations, which feeds the Presidential Streets master plan.

Cocoa Beach officials said the city is conducting its own vulnerability assessment and has hired staff to support resilience work. One attendee noted Cocoa Beach is beginning a vulnerability assessment that will be needed to access Resilient Florida grant funding; Eichols and Cocoa Beach staff discussed using the Cape Canaveral materials as a transferable template.

Eichols closed by offering to share his presentation slides with Cocoa Beach staff and answering follow‑up technical questions from residents and staff about maintenance, permitting and costs.

Next steps for Cocoa Beach mentioned during the meeting include completion of a city vulnerability assessment and continued exploration of grant‑funded projects and possible engineering studies by the Army Corps of Engineers for critical shoreline infrastructure.