Indian River Shores was formally notified by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection last week that a 2.9-mile stretch of oceanfront from John’s Island Club to Mariner Village finally has been declared “critically eroded,” making it easier for the town to receive emergency help the next time a tropical system chews up the beaches.
The written notification marks the culmination of a two-and-a-half year, $150,000 effort to have the stretch of Shores’ beach known as Sector 4 – hit hard when Hurricane Nicole came ashore just south of Vero in November 2022 – added to the state list.
Absent the “critically eroded” designation, no state money and no FEMA money was available to provide much needed assistance for the oceanfront homes and condos behind the beaches hammered by Nicole. Numerous private residences and the John’s Island Club were forced to get their own permits and pay for emergency sand replacement.
Since that time, Shores Town Manager Jim Harpring and his staff have been working to have that section of the town’s beaches designated as critically eroded – for next time.
After getting a verbal commitment from a top Florida Department of Environmental Protection official that the town and county had jumped through all the required legal and engineering hoops, Harpring on April 15 finally got it in writing.
“The Department has reviewed the submitted data and information for the Indian River County Sector 4 area (Indian River Shores) for consideration of a critical erosion designation. The Department has determined that beach and dune erosion conditions coupled with the construction of the recent recovery dune in the area that the segment would qualify as critically eroded under the definition provided in Rule 62B-36.002(5), F.A.C. We will plan to incorporate this area (approximately Department Reference Monument R-51.3 to R-70) into our next annual critical erosion report, currently scheduled to be published in the summer of 2025,” wrote Lainie Edwards, Deputy Director of FDEP’s Office of Resilience and Coastal Protection.
The designation, plus a recently completed dune replenishment project in Indian River Shores made successful thanks to a John’s Island resident who donated the use of his oceanfront property on Sea Court as a staging area, sets the town up better than in the typical year to weather the upcoming hurricane season.
“First, it puts us on a priority list with the county, and it opens up funding avenues for both FDEP and FEMA,” Harpring said. “It also opens up the possibility for an engineered beach as opposed to just dune restoration.”
Mayor Brian Foley pointed out that, though the 2022 hurricanes made the issue more urgent, concerns about the Shores not being on the priority list date back to Hurricane Matthew’s graze of Florida’s Atlantic coast in 2016, and even to prior hurricanes and Nor’easters that cause periodic erosion.
“After over a decade of hard work by our council members and town staff, we are gratified to finally obtain critically eroded status for Sector 4,” Foley said. “The official designation of Sector 4 as critically eroded is a long overdue recognition of the serious challenges our shoreline has faced for years. This not only validates the concerns of our Indian River Shores community, but also opens the door to essential resources and long-term solutions. We are committed to working closely with our county, state and federal partners to ensure the preservation and protection of our coastline for future generations.”
“This now puts us on a schedule so that we will hopefully get sand now automatically when we need it we won’t have to go through what we did to get the new sand that we just received,” said John’s Island resident and former councilwoman Mary Alice Smith.
Smith praised Harpring for “getting it over the finish line,” and also complimented the crews hired by Indian River County to complete the recent sand project and dune plantings in her community.
“It’s beautiful they did it. They’ve done a really good job. The sand, obviously, it’s still there and the dune, it’s all been planted it looks fabulous. It looks really, really nice and I guess we’ll know by next fall how it holds up, right?”
