Volusia County presents long-term beach management plan; consultants rank beach nourishment top option

Volusia County coastal staff and consultants on Monday presented a draft long-term beach management plan that recommends countywide beach and dune restoration, identifies near-term sand-placement projects and outlines state and federal funding pathways.

Jessica Fentress, Volusia County coastal director, told the audience the county "is 1 of 2 counties on the East Coast of Florida that does not have a beach management plan," and described recent emergency and planned sand work. She said the county lost roughly 6,000,000 cubic yards of sand during the 2022 storms and that current short-term projects replace only a portion of that loss.

The presentation summarized three near-term efforts: a stockpile and truck-haul program behind Ponce Inlet (about 750,000 cubic yards), a south-New Smyrna placement project dredging roughly 550,000 cubic yards from Rattlesnake Island, and a larger "Shoals to Shore" initiative supported by about $82,000,000 in Florida Department of Environmental Protection grant funding. "That was in response to the calls for assistance from our elected leadership," Fentress said of the DEP funding.

Consultants from Taylor Engineering outlined a…