BRADENTON BEACH – In the second step required by a Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) grant to prepare a vulnerability assessment document for the city, a town hall meeting was held at city hall on June 27.
Environmental Scientist Associates (ESA) Senior Environmental Scientist Brett Solomon was retained by the city and led the presentation.
“This is the public outreach meeting,” Solomon said. “This is a grant through the DEP the city applied for and received last year. The document that will be produced is necessary based on new state law that says that every coastal community and city throughout the state needs to have a vulnerability assessment document prepared if they want to apply for funding for infrastructure, construction projects, etc.”
Solomon’s expertise lies in resiliency.
“This is one of the documents the city wanted to apply for resiliency grant dollars for construction,” he said. “They would need this document prepared and submitted to the state.”
According to state statute, there are eight tasks that need to be fulfilled: A kick-off meeting, a public outreach meeting, acquiring background data, exposure analysis, sensitivity analysis, identification of focus areas, a final vulnerability assessment report with maps and tables and a public presentation.
“We already did a kick-off meeting with the city commission, you can see that they all have the same due date which is March 31, 2025,” he said. “The city is trying to get this document finalized and submitted to the state ASAP because, in order for them to go for grant funding dollars again if there are construction projects that would meet the criteria of needing this document, they would need it for this fiscal year.”
The resiliency grant application period opens in July and closes on Sept. 1, he said.
“As the city is submitting for those public dollars then this document will need to be finalized,” Solomon said. “This meeting today is to get the word out, what this document is, how it’s going to be used, and what we’ve been compiling over these past few months with the city.”
Solomon said sea level rise, king tides and intensifications of storms are factors that coastal communities are dealing with.
“If you have this elevated tide and then you get a 50- or 100-year storm event, what’s that going to look like? We’re trying to compile that projection data and see what can be useful for the city,” he said.
Three main categories were evaluated – critical and regionally significant asset inventory, topographic data and flood scenario-related data.
“We have some examples of the focus areas that the city commission directed us to take a look at,” Solomon said. “The focus area list is not the be-all and end-all, but it will at least tell the state these are critical areas of concern for the city and what they can do.”
He said public input is welcome to identify critical focus areas throughout the city.
“Then we’ll be putting out the final document for public review and then the final hearing,” he said.
One of the areas of concern for flooding that was identified by the city was 12th Street North.
“Twelfth Street North at Avenue A, it’s very low and it takes a lot of water” from Gulf Drive, Mayor John Chappie said. “With the new construction that’s going on on Avenue A and at the end of 12th Street. it’s created like a dam, because they’ve built up the land, part of it, and it used to sheet over. Now there’s no place for it to sheet over and everything is being tunneled to the end of 12th Street North. Which, of course, backs up all along Avenue A. It’s one of our hot spots. It’s a problem area we need to focus in on.”
“We rank these by elevation,” Solomon said. “A lower elevation is going to have a higher ranking with vulnerability.”
Another identified hot spot area was 21st Place North and Avenue A.
“We’re improving the infrastructure in that area,” Chappie said. “We had a $2.69 million appropriations grant from the state of Florida for stormwater work. They’re totally rebuilding Avenue A on the southern end.”
“This is a good example of what we’re trying to capture,” Solomon said. “In the future, the city and citizens can use this document to apply for more grant funding.”
Other areas of concern were Bay Drive near Fifth Street South and Bridge Street.
“What we did at ESA was, we assisted the city with coming up with a design for a resiliency adaptation project that was basically a living shoreline/resiliency barrier, we assisted the city with permitting and permits have been finalized so the city can go out and construct it any point,” Solomon said. “We assisted the city with applying for a construction grant with FDEP and we ranked high enough to receive funding, however, the city has not received word yet if that funding was funded by the state Legislature.”
The barriers to help dissipate wave surge along that low-lying area include reef balls, oyster domes and the planting of mangroves.
“We’ll be bringing in some sand as well. It’s a combination of things to fortify that area,” Solomon said.
Solomon said he is hoping to have a draft of the report available within the next month for the public to review before being approved by city staff and submitted to the state.
