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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2015-1113 Special City Commission Meeting SUMMARY MINUTES Special City Commission Meeting Friday, November 13, 2015, 10:00 a.m. City of Sunny Isles Beach, Florida ATTENTION ALL LOBBYISTS: CITY LAW REQUIRES YOUR REGISTRATION PRIOR TO ENGAGING IN LOBBYING ACTIVITIES BEFORE CITY STAFF, BOARDS,COMMITTEES OR THE CITY COMMISSION. PLEASE CONTACT THE CITY CLERK FOR FORMS AND ADDITIONAL INFORMATION. AGENDA 1. CALL TO ORDER/ROLL CALL OF MEMBERS The meeting was called to order by Mayor Scholl at 10:00 a.m., with the following officials present: Mayor George "Bud" Scholl City Manager Christopher J. Russo Vice Mayor Jeanette Gatto Deputy City Attorney Fernando Amuchastegui Commissioner Isaac Aelion City Clerk Jane A. Hines, MMC Commissioner Dana Goldman Deputy City Manager Stan Morris Commissioner Jennifer Levin 2. OPENING REMARKS Action: Mayor Scholl gave opening remarks. 3. RESOLUTIONS 3A. A Resolution of the City Commission of the City of Sunny Isles Beach,Florida,Approving a Maintenance Agreement with the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) for the Installation of Sidewalk Pavers on Collins Avenue, in Substantially the Same Form Attached Hereto as Exhibit "A"; Authorizing the Mayor to Execute Said Agreement; Authorizing the City Attorney and the City Manager to Do All Things Necessary to Effectuate the Terms of this Agreement; Providing for an Effective Date. Action: City Clerk Hines read the title, and City Manager Russo reported that certain sidewalks are being upgraded to pavers. As FDOT owns the right-of-way, they are requesting the City to enter into a Maintenance of Agreement(MOA). This project includes the sidewalks at 19575 Collins Avenue (Regalia), 17501 Collins Avenue (Monaco), and 17475 Collins Avenue (Chateau). Public Speakers: None Commissioner Aelion moved and Vice Mayor Gatto seconded a motion to approve the resolution. Resolution No. 2015-2482 was adopted by a voice vote of 5-0 in favor. 4. DISCUSSION ITEMS 4A. Discussion regarding the Beach Erosion Management Report. Action: City Manager Russo introduced Jordan Cheifet, Senior Engineer,and Penny Cutt of Coastal Systems International,Inc.,who are very familiar with the City of Sunny Isles Beach. 1 Summary Minutes:Special City Commission Meeting November 13,2015 City of Sunny Isles Beach,Florida Jordan Cheifet gave a Power-Point Presentation noting two questions: is using coastal structures the right solution for Beach Management for Sunny Isles Beach; and, if they are the right solution, are they feasible to get them permitted, designed, and installed. He gave the project history that it is a Federal Shore Protection Project managed by the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers, and the local sponsor is Miami-Dade County. This project has placed sand on the beach four (4) times since 1988, most recently in 2001 when two submerged breakwaters were installed at the north end of the City to help stabilize the beach. The Phase I Study evaluated some of the local coastal prophecies, identified some erosion hot spots in the City, and provided some initial preliminary recommendations. Some recent erosion in the City prompted the City to update this report with new information and to look at the feasibility of using coastal structures as part of the ongoing Beach Management Plan. He said it is important that we all have a basic understanding of the coastal properties white sand is moving on our beaches. The winds, the waves, and the currents all of these properties, even the size and shape of a grain of sand on the beach,contribute to what you see when you walk up and down the beach. They all contribute to what is going on and so it is vital that we understand these properties as we formulate our recommendations moving forward. Mr. Cheifet said back in May, he and Penny Cutt along with some City staff did a site visit and they drove the beach. They started on the north end near Golden Beach and drove all the • way south to Baker's Haulover Inlet. Why did they do it, they wanted to see it first hand as opposed to looking at photographs. They were looking at the shape of the beach, the width of the beach, the slope of the beach, the condition of the dunes and seawalls, and all of this helped them form their recommendations. They observed that the beach is generally wider as we go further south, and so this means that the sand is moving from the north to the south, and it is not being replenished on the north end, there is no sand coming into Sunny Isles Beach from Golden Beach. They also observed some of the erosional hot spots at the north end near Ocean 1 and Ocean 2 Condominiums,and also the recent shoreline retreat adjacent to the Newport Pier. He showed some photographs taken from the Pier and you can see the shoreline retreat just within the last six (6) months. Mr. Cheifet said when you think of beach management, we can't just think of Sunny Isles Beach,we need to think of it more regionally. These are projects in Broward County and as he had mentioned, sand moves from the north to the south at a rate of about a mile a year. These projects that are done in Broward County, that sand that is placed on the beach is all moving south into Sunny Isles Beach, and he noted the yellow dots on the shoreline map he showed,those are completed projects. And so the maintenance dredging of Port Everglades, the truck haul project in Hollywood that is placing 150,000 cubic yards of free sand that is moving into Sunny Isles Beach. Also there is a planned project to bypass space around Port Everglades, starting next year they are going to start pumping the sand across the inlet at a rate of about 50,000 yards a year. That sand is also going to make its way south,and that is a continuous source of new sand that will eventually make its way onto our beaches. Similarly as we move south into Miami-Dade County, specifically Sunny Isles Beach, as you walk down Collins Avenue there are lots of condominiums going up, and when they dig their foundations, underground parking, and basements, all of that beach compatible sand gets placed on the beach, and so that is maintaining the beach width. As these projects continue, that is more free sand for the City that is getting added to the local beach system. 2 Summary Minutes:Special City Commission Meeting November 13.2015 City of Sunny Isles Beach,Florida Mr. Cheifet said the shoreline has historically been maintained through the Federal Project, and the source of sand historically was an off-shore bar area here in Miami-Dade County and they would dredge the sand and pump it onto the beach. But as recently as 2013 there was a project in Miami Beach and the last viable sand was used. There is no more sand immediately off shore, and so the County and the Corps have begun evaluating alternative sand sources to maintain the beaches here in Miami-Dade County. The Corps recently completed a study to evaluate dredging and barging sand from offshore. That was met with some significant public opposition. The County has begun evaluating trucking in sand from upland mines,while that process has a lot of benefits in terms of quality control and reduced environmental permit requirements,there are significantly higher costs associated with using upland mine sand. More recently the County has begun evaluating using international sand from the Bahamas where they would barge the sand in,unfortunately using that sand would eliminate any possible cost sharing because the Corps cannot use international source of sand until all domestic sources have been utilized. Mr. Cheifet said in the Newport Pier area, as he had mentioned, they have observed some recent shoreline retreats in this area. The Pier has a long history back to the 1930's, and it was recently rebuilt in 2012. He showed some photographs of the old Pier that was supported by a great number of timber piles, very dense, and that acted to knock the waves down as they reached the shoreline. By reducing wave energy, the sand is allowed to settle out, it gets deposited on the beach and it stays on the beach. In reviewing some of the permit applications and the design for the new Pier,it did not appear that the new design considered a revised pile layout onset of a transport here in Sunny Isles Beach. So,the number of piles is significantly reduced, almost 50%, and so now the foundation is much more wide open. When those waves come they can pass under the Pier,they can reach the shoreline to lead to more erosion. He compared photographs of the old Pier and the new Pier,where in 2013 the beach was high,the piles were painted down to existing beach grade at that time,and so you can see that about 2 to 3 feet of erosion has occurred under the Pier since then. We also performed a cursory review of historic aerial to get an idea of where the shoreline was historically and where it is today. He showed a photograph of the shoreline, the solid lines are the shorelines before the new Pier was put in, and the dotted lines are the shoreline after the Pier was put in. You can see from the yellow,the red,the green lines that historically the shoreline was relatively stable. You had a nice wide beach,and more recently from the black dotted line you can see from 2015 the limit of influence of the Pier and it is eroded back immediately up toward the down drift of the Pier. However, if you look at the blue line which is from 2006,you can see that in areas the shoreline was relatively close to where it is today. This may be the result of the Segment 3 Project in Broward County in 2006,that sand hadn't moved south into Sunny Isles Beach yet, and now in the middle years you see the wider beach of that sand in Sunny Isles Beach,and now it is properly moving south towards Baker's Haulover Inlet. It is key to understand this recent shoreline treatment of the Pier, that is a function of the new Pier foundation, is it a function of maybe a separate event, maybe sand moving through the system, maybe it is the combination of all of those factors. And so further evaluation and analysis is required to really figure out why that has been a recent problem. He asked Penny to talk about some of the recent coastal structure projects. Penny Cutt asked if there were any questions before she went into the next segment. Mayor Scholl asked her to explain this issue with the Pier, the density of the pilings, and why the 3 Summary Minutes:Special City Commission Meeting November 13,2015 City of Sunny Isles Beach,Florida sand settles and doesn't settle, etc. Ms. Cutt said what Jordan did with this slide is he analyzed some historical photos that were readily available and he just traced the shoreline position over the years. If we look at the spacing of the Pier, basically the Pier is acting as a permeable groin,and so we know from the structures that everyone has seen up and down the Jersey shore back in the 1940's, 1950's, and 1960's, that engineers can design anything. They can design a structure that is going to stop all sands from moving down the coast. We have got to recognize that the shoreline is essentially a river of sand, and so that sand is moving with a net movement to the south of about a mile a year. In the winter we do have some sand that moves north but the net volume of sand moves to the south. And so when we have got a non- permeable groin of fixed solid structure that stops the sand from moving, it holds all the sand north of it on the east coast and it causes the area south of it to erode,or no new sand is coming into the system south of it because that sand is still moving south and it is not being sent from the north. With the old Pier, it had a lot more piles, and so if we go to the photograph and the restroom, it is a really good photo to show this. It shows the density of those piles, and so when we have got the majority of our wind driven waves coming in at the angle it is going to hit the beach most of the year, pushing that sand south along our shoreline, it hits those piles and gets knocked out of suspension, and so that sand accumulates. Now being a permeable groin,the Pier with the piles,more sand is being held right in that area then would otherwise move down the beach if that structure wasn't there. And so now the new Pier has fewer piles and so it is letting more wave energy and more sands move through so that may be part of why we are observing the erosion here. But as Jordan also mentioned,we can't look at this as a closed system. We have to realize that there is a lot of other things going on here, and one of the things that knowing what is going on in the region seems most evident is that Broward County nourishment Statement 3 from Port Everglades to Golden Beach in 2005. That sand wave has moved through the system about the same time that we are looking at on these aerial piers, and so we see a wider shoreline in 2009, 2012 but a narrower shoreline in 2006 as that Broward sand had not gotten here yet. But by 2009, 2012 the Statement 3 sands were moving through so we have a nice wide beach. Since the Pier was replaced,we are seeing erosion again. Is that truly erosion or is it the beach returning to previous equilibrium and we just don't have the benefit of a huge project being done north of us to feed our beach. Commissioner Aelion said this system is always going to be in play anyway, because beach renourishment is going to be an ongoing thing in the future. You cannot look at this as a closed system because it is consistently in motion. What is interesting to observe is the differential between 2013 and 2015, 2012 is actually when the Pier was completed. He is sure that the engineers who built the Pier, in the design structure, must have taken beach erosion into account. It is too early to make an informed opinion because so much action has happened in the last 6 to 8 years. Ms. Cutt said we would like to do some research and determine whether they did consider the permeability of the structure in the design. A lot of times they have gone from the wood piles to the concrete piles to improve the longevity of the structure. Commissioner Levin said she thinks Jordan has said that the sand was not moving south from Golden Beach. Is there some structure preventing the sand from moving south from Golden Beach? Ms. Cutt said there is no structure but generally the shoreline configuration in Golden Beach is more concave so that focuses all the wave energy and the sand stays in 4 Summary Minutes:Special City Commission Meeting November 13,2015 City of Sunny Isles Beach,Florida Golden Beach. Historically yes it has but there is no project to come from the north, Golden Beach just keeps filling up and if it was full,the sand would continue south. Commissioner Levin said she is fairly certain that there is probably some law out there that says you can't build structures to prevent the sand from flowing,or can you? Penny said we will get a little bit of that but you cannot cause a down drift effect, you cannot cause an adverse down drift impact from your neighbor. Just like we want the sand coming from Broward County Segment 3 to keep coming, the people down drift of us don't want us to hold our sand and preclude it from moving further south. City Manager Russo said on that note, Penny do you know the amount that comes from Haulover from the north to the south? Jordan had mentioned about 50,000 yards being pumped to the south side of Port Everglades. How does that compare with what they just started to permit pumping from Haulover from the north side over to Bal Harbour? Mr. Cheifet said you are talking about the volume of Baker's Haulover inlet, he believes it is a similar number of about 50,000 to 60,000 yards every eight (8) years. Mayor Scholl said because we let it build up to a certain level. Ms. Cutt said it is similar to future plans of the Port Everglades project to look at bypassing material about every three(3)years and so when Jordan mentioned the 50,000 a year, that is basically about 150,000 every three (3)years in reality. They have got to make economy some scale work but the more frequently they do it, the better it is for the beach system,the more natural it replicates the natural rhetorical threat. Vice Mayor Gatto said she is looking at the chart and the red line for 2012, seems to be the most consistent one and probably providing the best beach line there. At first glance you are looking at a chart like this and you can see that there is going to be ebbs and flows and it will probably be like that forever. But what was it that caused 2012 to be so wonderfully consistent? Ms. Cutt said we haven't had a hurricane in a while,and the sand from Broward County that has been moving through the system for a while, a million cubic yards or so, with very little lost offshore due to storms. This is just looking at aerial images,just making a quantitative assessment of it. City Manager Russo said the differentiation between that 2006 line and the current black dotted line,it may not seem like a lot but that is very substantial in our ability to secure under the mechanics, the plumbing and everything that is under the Pier building itself, the restaurant,an access for the lifeguards,and other things,because that 2006 number in theory was at its worst point until now but that difference is substantial. Ms. Cutt said we have not done an in-depth analysis to see where it was in past years, was this a typical thing that happens every few decades? There are a lot of unknowns right now. And again,this is just Jordan tracing the rack line on aerials where you can see it, but it provides a nice graphic for discussion purposes. Commissioner Levin asked what kind of an effect all the construction have on this,of all the buildings on the beach? Ms. Cutt said in the past the excavation for garages were relatively small, they run through 10,000 cubic yards of sand which often times there were 3,000 to 5,000 cubic yards of sand. Now they are going deeper and bigger and they are pulling out 20,000 to almost 40,000 cubic yards of sand from a particular project. That is equivalent to the size of the truck haul nourishments that the County has done in the past for an area like this when we nourished a hot spot. And so that sand provides a tremendous source of free 5 Summary Minutes:Special City Commission Meeting November 13,2015 City of Sunny Isles Beach,Florida sand to maintain the shoreline. Commissioner Levin said her question is why can't we have the Construction Control Line, her question is more along the lines of the actual buildings themselves, does that create a problem with the way the sand erodes? Ms. Cutt said there is something called the Line of Construction that needs to be evaluated before a building can be permitted where they will not let a building go substantially farther than the other buildings in the area. Now, if we can remove all the buildings and close most of the inlets for the most part it would be a whole different story. We are on a barrier island, and barrier islands naturally would be migrating landward and seaward in response to storms. We are not allowing that to happen,and so basically we are saying,we want to fix the shoreline in place, we don't care what wind and waves hits it, we are just going to put more sand there as the environment takes it away. Because we are creating an engineered environment,and we are trying to hold the shoreline, we are not really letting the buildings go further seaward than they are, basically they are providing us with a free source of sand. Ms. Cutt said we are talking about structures. We want to know if structures are a solution for Sunny Isles Beach to help hold the beach and keep some of our sand from going south to our neighbors. We have heard a lot in the news about structures not being permeable, structures being very expensive, structures having ecological impact that needs to be mitigated, or structures can be permitted in small isolated situations where they are fixing a problem. You can see the 32nd Street hot spot project is a project that Coastal Systems designed for Dade County where there was a headland that stuck out further into the ocean than the area to the south and you can see the shape of the shoreline there. What the structures did was reorient the shoreline so that the headlands were not exposed to all that wave energy. The County was constantly doing truck haul projects there and nourishing that hot spot, it is an isolated hot spot. So three(3)particular structures reoriented the beach and you can see how they are still a down drift impact but there is still a beach there. Despite the fact that there is an impact, we have got a nice wide beach to the north where there was no beach before, and to the south you still have a decent beach that is providing the required storm protection. Ms. Cutt said similarly Port Everglades,immediately south of the inlet,a series of structures were placed,another series of three(3)were placed to hold the shoreline there because down drift of the inlet where they don't routinely bypass,there is always a loss of sand,and so that is helping to hold some of that sand in that hot spot that is down drift of the inlet. And so you can see that in small isolated areas, structures can be permitted. In the north end of Sunny Isles Beach we have got a small isolated hot spot. Structures may be a solution and the structures put in by the Corps were intended to help but we need to evaluate whether they are doing what they were intended to do. The model since the structures in the north end of the City were installed have gotten significantly better. Also, once you place structures sometimes they subside, they sink down into the ground. Now a-days, structures are typically placed on hard bottom that is covered in a thin veneer of sand so that they don't sink because you can't place structures on exposed hard bottoms because that would be an ecological impact. But these structures may have been constructed on articulated concrete mats and they may have subsided some. When we look at this Phase I Study in 2009, they were impounded by quite a bit of sand. In 2013 it looks like there is a lot of sand but in 2014 it looks like the structures were exposed. But the question is,are those structures doing what they are supposed to? If you look across,just west of the northern structure, you see where 6 Summary Minutes:Special City Commission Meeting November 13,2015 City of Sunny Isles Beach,Florida the sand is jutting out a little bit, the beach is a little bit wider, that could be an effect of the structure but we see that sort of effect in other places along the shoreline where there are no structures. Similarly we are not seeing a similar effect in the shorelines on the west side of the southern structure, and so we really need to do some additional evaluation and survey those structures, see what the current elevation is because if they really subsided so much, they may not be doing their job to trick the waves. Waves break when the water depth is half their height and if they are too low, they are not going to have any effect. Ms. Cutt described planned projects with structures. Again we are talking about structures in the news,at 63rd Street the Corps of Engineers have permits to build a series of another three (3) structures similar to what was done at 32"d Street but they don't have funding from Congress to do it, and so that project has not been constructed but it has been designed and permitted. The Singer Islands in South Palm Beach Project, those projects propose a series of 11 to 13 off-shore breakwaters originally exposed structures and ultimately they were going back and forth between exposed and submerged structures because the Fish and Wildlife Commission and the Fish and Wildlife Service were both having issues with the effect to swimming and nesting turtles but both of those projects proposed basically City limits to City limits structured offshore, and they wanted an isolated solution for a targeted problem. They said we want to armor off the whole shoreline. The County spent hundreds of thousands of dollars and ultimately withdrew the applications. So if we go in for a targeted solution that we have modeled and designed and demonstrated the need for,we can, just like south of Port Everglades and 32"d Street, get permits for those structures. But first we really need to evaluate whether the project need is there,and whether the cost benefits are there. Ms. Cutt said their evaluation told them several things. Right now we are realizing less sediment movement in the City then we had before. In part we don't have those big sand waves from Broward County moving through, we have got a few other projects that are feeding us. But Port Everglades at the north end of our coastal south is in impoundment right now, and so once they start bypassing across Port Everglades which is in the foreseeable future and that sand gets to the City, we will have a source of sand. The wave energy based on some of the reports we have reviewed seems to be a little low right now. Is that due to climate related activities? Is that a geologic feature? Why is the wave energy lower, is it a pattern? We are not sure but we know that it seems to be a little bit less wave energy moving that sand south right now. The hot spots that we have documented in the past are still hot spots, they are still basically there. We have seen it in other similar studies we have done, hot spots that are there when we do one report,we do another assessment ten(10)years later and it doesn't seem to be a problem. We can't always answer the why, sometimes a hot spot is the result of a hundred thousand years ago there was an inlet there, and Mother Nature is trying to turn it back into an inlet again. Is there a wave break in the coral reef line offshore that is not tripping the waves in that location that is causing the wave energy to be focused on the shoreline there? There is a lot of reasons that can sometimes be derived to address why there is a hot spot in a particular location. Sometimes the coastal engineer can come up with a possible explanation. Ms. Cutt said that we all know that the modifications in the Newport Pier appear to be contributing to the erosion we are seeing, we can't say that all the erosion is because of the 7 Summary Minutes:Special City Commission Meetine November 13,2015 City of Sunny Isles Beach,Florida Pier, we need more data. The County when they do fiscal monitoring survey the shoreline, they survey every 1,000 feet, and the Newport Pier is in the middle. And so we really need more data and more dense data to evaluate that effect. Ms. Cutt reported on storm events. We have had very few hurricanes in the last few years but back in 2005 we had several storm events. Actually a long duration nor'easter where the wind is blowing hard for a longer duration can do more damage than a hurricane. And so there are a lot of things going on in the system that we need to understand. Everybody wants the magic bullet, everyone is saying there has got to be something out there that someone is going to invent that is going to hold our sands. She doesn't know if any of you were tracking the Hillsboro Beach Pressure Equalizing Modulars that was put on the beach about seven years ago or so, we were working with Hillsboro on a beach nourishment project, we were the engineers for those net groin structures. When she was in charge of Corps of Engineers office out of the Palm Beach office and oversaw that area, we were often approached by the sales representative wanting us to authorize those on the beach. We can consider an application to put those on the beach but the pounds are just another example of that,they are slotted PDC pipes with a Jacuzzi cup on the top. We have seen artificial seaweed, we have seen geo-tech power tubes,most of these have not been tried in Southeast Florida because we have got so much near shore hard bottom and so many potential ecological impacts that can't be permitted and can't be gotten around that we,there just are not that many proposals. The pens were ultimately removed from the beach in Hillsboro before the agencies would let us proceed with our beach nourishment project. Ms. Cutt said there are other options,alternatives,creative solutions,but none of them really work to hold our beach. What can we do to mitigate the erosion we are seeing at the Newport Pier? With additional data collection we can essentially propose to place some structures under or adjacent to the Newport Pier to help make it less permeable than it currently is. It is currently letting a lot of wave energy and a lot of sand move through the system. If we place some artificial reefs under or adjacent to the Pier to replicate,to make it more of a less permeable structure,then we could hold the shoreline there. We would need additional monitoring data and we would also need to model and demonstrate to the agencies that we are not going to cause a down drift effect,we are not going to adversely erode starve the beaches to ourselves which happens to still be within the City. And so there are options, these artificial reefs could be built out along the boulders, they could be built out of reef balls, but ultimately they would have that same effect of dissipating the wave energy that is causing that sand to move so fast from the system. Ms. Cutt showed some reef balls, the 63rd Street Breakwater Project that was permitted but not constructed is actually designed as a demonstration project using reef balls instead of natural lines of boulders. Either one would provide a fish aggregation structure that the fishermen on the Pier would like as long as they are not losing too many hooks and lines off the structures,but fish love these things,they swim through them,they have a lot of crevices and hiding spots and holes, and they do grow biological growth on them. Again the conceptual design alternatives,we could do a similar series of offshore structures to what we have at 32"d Street to hold the beach. But one thing you have got to remember is once you put structures in you are obligated to maintain them filled, and so if these are structures that are going to be like 32"d Street that are going to attach to the beach and cause a nice wide 8 Summary Minutes:Special City Commission Meeting November 13,2015 City of Sunny Isles Beach,Florida beach and we will design them to mitigate the down drift effect, we have got to keep them full. So if a hurricane comes through and removes all the sands on the landward side, we have got to fill them back up because if we don't fill them back up,then it will take a while for them to naturally fill back up and they will starve the beaches to the south. With the permits, one of the conditions in a permit for structures is that you maintain them in the impounded condition. Again,that is just to protect your down drift neighbors which in this case would be yourself since the hot spots are in the north end of the City. Ms. Cutt reported that she spent her entire career dealing with permitting and funding. We have got a lot of challenges,fortunately the Dade County Beach Project that was constructed by the Corps of Engineers in the 1970's is a nice wide beach. Unfortunately it buried some of our precious reefs but it has been maintained so we can maintain the footprint of the project and the impacts that previously occurred. When our neighbors to the north in Broward and Palm Beach Counties have very narrow beaches they can't impact hard bottom as a result of any projects that they build. And so we have a nice wide construction template that we have to work within, that is a plus for the City. The Corps of Engineers,the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, and the Dade County Department of Environmental Resources all need to issue permits and we would need to convince all the agencies that whatever we are proposing meets the need, and the impact are justifiable. So we understand that can be a very long process,if we are proposing structures we may need to do an environmental impact statement pursuant to NEBA to demonstrate that we identify all the potential environmental impacts associated with the project and that can be a very long costly process but it can be done. Funding is something that we need to look at closely, historically the beach in our area has been maintained with 50% Federal funds, 25% State funds, and the other 25%County and local. If the County continues to look towards foreign sources of sand,Federal funds can't be expended on those foreign sources of sand until they have demonstrated that there are no more practicable sources domestically. And so the Federal Government has taken the standpoint that the sources of sands in Federal waters off of Martin and St. Lucie Counties are viable sources to maintain Dade County. As long as that is their belief, then the Feds can't contribute to a project that uses a foreign source of sand. Similarly if anybody proposes to use Bahamian sands or a foreign source of sand they are going to have to do an environmental impact statement and nobody wants to be the first one to do that because everybody is waiting for someone else to do it so they don't have to spend the money. Palm Beach, Broward and Dade Counties are talking a little bit about doing a regional environmental impact statement to address because they are all looking very carefully at sources of sand to maintain their shorelines. And so that may be something in the foreseeable future,right now the smaller projects that are being constructed,a lot of them are using Ortona,a sand mine in Central Florida as a source of sand. It is beautiful sand,it is triple washed, it has very low fines, and it stays on the beach a little longer because it is a larger grain size, it is one of those historical natural shorelines of Florida. It has been naturally sorted by beach processes millions of years ago. Ms. Cutt said basically, the hot spots in the north end of the City are still hot spots, we still have an erosional issue there, it is less obvious when we have a nice wide beach because our neighbors to the north have built beaches and are nourishing that hot spot for us. But when there is not a source of sand coming to us, then we notice those a little bit more. We recognize the Newport Pier as suffering erosion right now,with the data available to us right 9 Summary Minutes:Special City Commission Meeting November 13,2015 City of Sunny Isles Beach,Florida now, we can't definitively say that the Newport Pier is causing all of that erosion. We do believe that it is causing some of that erosion. Ms. Cutt reported on future projects,plans and completed are going to provide more sand to us but how do we hold that sand? How can we keep that sand? If we place structures in our hot spots can we mitigate our sand losses to the south without starving our beaches? We can design structures but are those structures cost effective? Does it make sense to build structures that can be expensive and are proceeded by a long expensive permitting process and a lot of local engineer modeling, or shall we just keep trucking in sand to nourish those hot spots? And so these are questions that we have that need to be answered and we need to decide where we are going to focus our efforts and our energy when historically Dade County has pretty much taken care of the City beaches for the most part, not as well as we would have liked. We know that the Corps of Engineers is planning another project but they are planning to use upland sand sources for that project and the amount of funding that is really available when they are ready to build it and the cost of sand is going to dictate the volume of sand that gets placed here. Ms. Cutt said one of our main recommendations for the City at this point is to monitor your shorelines. Do a physical monitoring survey every summer at a more dense frequency so instead of monitoring every 1,000 feet along the shoreline,monitor every 500 or maybe even 250 feet to collect some more data so we can analyze what is going on. That is going to support whatever we want to go with in the future, and the other thing it is going to do is to provide us data so that if a hurricane comes through and FEMA money is available, we can get FEMA money to replace that lost volume of sand that was there pre-storm. Dade County doesn't always do a survey every summer. They usually do,they often do,but they don't do them every summer because of those fiscal constraints,and so the surveys that they are doing aren't really on a dense enough frequency to allow us to collect all the data that we need to analyze some of the things going on in the City. If we were to start doing surveys a little more frequently and more dense in the City and have that data, that would help us over the long term to analyze what is going on. We also need to decide if we want to look at a cost benefit analysis of structures because if we find that structures do meet the cost benefit test then it may make sense to lobby the County, the State, and the Corps to cost share in structures. Commissioner Levin asked what is the surveying methodology? Ms. Cutt said there is a topographic survey that is done on the beach, and then there is a bathametric survey that is done in the water and they overlap and that data is combined so we understand the full beach profile. The beach actually goes from the back side of the dune to the depth disclosure is in about 15 feet to 20 feet of water, and it is the point where sand no longer will come back on the beach through natural processes. From the depth disclosure to the dune, sands are moving constantly, in some areas it moves more than others. When a storm comes through it moves a lot more, but that whole thing is the dynamic sand system. In the winter the beach gets a lot steeper, now if we were not on a stabilized barrier island and there weren't buildings back there,the beach of the barrier islands would just roll landward,and then when things calm down again, they are going to move back out. But because we are stabilizing those shorelines and a storm comes through, the sand is trying to over top but we have seawalls and buildings there so it just kind of builds up and the ocean eats away at it and we 10 Summary Minutes:Special City Commission Meeting November 13,2015 City of Sunny Isles Beach,Florida lose sand and it gets nice and steep there,and then it will lay back down. That is all going on between the depth disclosure and the dune. That is the area that is surveyed when we do these surveys because we like to have a nice dry beach and that is what we think of as the beach. But the beach system actually goes all the way out to the depth disclosure, and so when we do those surveys, DEP has a set of criteria so everyone in the State surveys the same exact thing, the same methodology, the same data. All that data is uploaded to the State's DEP sites and it is available for anybody to use and it is all consistent. Commissioner Levin asked if it is a combination of surveying done by man and equipment and satellites? Ms. Cutt said no, it is still labor intensive, we have two people on the beach with equipment, surveying the elevation,the location of the beach system. At this point we do not have a remote sensing technology available to us but we are looking at some drones that can do some pretty impressive surveying that is exciting for the future. Commissioner Aelion said the weight that it has is also limited to us individually as a City but as far as long term to the hot spots, etc., is it a question of polling efforts? He read a report about the circulation that the Federal government did on how much beach erosion each jurisdiction has of beach and they decided which places to concentrate on. How do you foresee that? Ms. Cutt said you have to consider the Federal government looking at the big picture. In her career she started out working for DERM, she went to South Florida Water • Management District,which is State, she went to the Army Corps of Engineers before going to the private sector. She has seen it, the Feds are looking big picture, and they are distributing their finances as they can to the area's worse in need. It comes down to the City fighting for the City and you need data as ammunition. When you have that information you can involve your Lobbyist,your Lobbyist can fight at the County level so that the County has the data and information, and Lobbyist to fight at the State level. The State fights at the Federal level, obviously the City can also go directly to the Federal level. The bottom line is that you are very fortunate in that you have a Federal project. There are a lot of Federal projects, Dade County included, where they are coming to the end of their 5th year lifecycle and fortunately through the work of Lobbyists, some of that is being extended. They don't want the projects to die but they don't want to keep spending money on beaches. So we need that data, we need that ammunition, and we need to look out for ourselves at the ground level. It is hard to go to the County and say I need this, here is a viable solution, I want you to do it, I want you to study it when they are running around looking for hot spots that are critical. And so if we can demonstrate that this structural solution will reduce the cost that you need to spend to maintain our shoreline, then they will start to look at it. And then it might be a matter of lobbying the County to cost share in that effort. Ms. Cutt said they have had a variety of clients that have approached things on right-of-ways, for example the City of Hollywood have decided to move forward and make it a sand placement event independent of Broward County. Broward County did Segment 3 before the Feds had authorized a budget to build the project and it took them about 12 years to get reimbursed by the Federal government. And so it comes down to lobbying for yourself Commissioner Aelion said either that or just owning or being a big country as opposed to user,small countries don't think they have their breakers along the so called shoreline which is smaller than here, and they don't have a problem. They have the same beach for the last 80 to 100 years, and so when you have a huge border like we have, it comes with the 11 Summary Minutes:Special City Commission Meeting November 13,2015 City of Sunny Isles Beach,Florida territory. Ms. Cutt said working with the Army Corps of Engineers is pretty eye opening. Mayor Scholl said what he thinks we are hearing is that it is the squeaky wheel syndrome. If we want to do something,you know you can always sit back and leave our fate in the hands of the County and the State and eventually, hopefully they are going to get to us. He knows for a fact, under the current Dade County Federal Project that is in place, we were third on the list from a hot spot perspective, and so the $10 Million that we kind of goaded the County into, it was the Mayor's Beach Alliance, the County wasn't moving and then when we had the press conference then all of a sudden all of our phones rang. For the$10 Million the County is going to put up, but they are going to get some matching funds, is really probably only going to cover the coming year for the City of Miami Beach because they had the two (2) worst hot spots, we were third. He thinks we will get treated kind of picky lee eventually at some level,or the question is,do we spend the money to build the data to create a position of advocacy, that is what Penny is saying. She is saying that we don't expect you to be able to afford to go out and form your own beach renourishment or maybe even afford these mitigation techniques, in some cases we might be able to afford them. But at the very least, we should probably do the data which is also going to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars if not millions but you should build the data in order to create a position of advocacy in order to go out and prove that you do need these things or that these things would be effective and that ultimately then it comes down to who pays. If you can prove it to be effective and it may mitigate the State and the Federal government's requirement to renourish our beaches in the future, they may kick in earlier if we kick in as well. What we have to contemplate as a Commission is how much do we want to spend on this, do we really see that there is a little bit of light at the end of the tunnel or not. It is hard to say. Mayor Scholl said one thing that he does feel very comfortable with, he feels that we have the right experts. He can tell you that they opened his eyes up to really what happens here. The truth is, this is science and engineering, and coastal engineering, and even that isn't a perfect science because there are so many contributing factors, that to model it, it is complicated. It is a conflict modeling exercise. It is hard to say that in 2012 when the Pier was done, that the old Pier didn't contribute to slowing down that sand. When the Pier was done and that project started to trail off, the sand from the north started to trail off in 2013- 2014 and all of a sudden that little black dotted line is 2015 and it is back. It is hard to say but the one thing we do know, based on the science, if we had some impediments under the Pier that created a greater sense of natural ability and slowed things down. What it is doing is the sand is moving and it hits the wall so to speak even if it is not a solid wall,and then the sand falls out of suspension and drops, and then you start to build the sand up there but the trick is that you can't do that and completely gut the south end of the Pier, and that is where engineering comes in and there is a balancing act there. Or do we put these little walls of rocks offshore where the sand builds up against those and then creates that effect, and so there are a lot of things we can do. Those types of projects we can probably afford,again,the permitting is one of those Federal exams we go through in order to get something done. It is terrible permitting but you can permit it. The good news is that if we found something that we want to do, the permitting process is so onerous we can be going after the money while we are going after the permitting. We can start the permitting process and start lobbying our co-payers because remember, it is not our beach, it is a County beach. And the fact is, as many people come from Hollywood, or from West Dade to use that beach especially 12 Summary Minutes:Special City Commission Meeting November 13.2015 City of Sunny Isles Beach,Florida Haulover as they come from Sunny Isles Beach, that beach is a public beach. And so the County does have an obligation to maintain that asset, it is not our asset, we just get the benefit of building on it and using it. He thinks this is not a question we are going to resolve today obviously but he thinks we have got very good experts. They have explained this in as plain an English as they can explain, we all get the gist of it, and it is our decision. Are we going to spend money on more analysis to create a scientific arguable argument for going after additional funding, or even contributing a chunk of our own funding in order to create some of these engineered breakwaters somehow, in one form or fashion because we can't afford our own beach renourishment,that is going to bankrupt us,that is not going to work. We are going to have to rely on what goes on. He agrees with Penny that we have had these extraordinary projects where they dig these basements 30 feet deep. To your point Commissioner Levin whereby we get the benefit of that sand, and it is going on right now. You know we have got that truck haul project,the County was dragging us through the mud on some of those approvals. What he would recommend is that staff works with our Consultants to figure out the cost of some of the phases of these surveys that we may want to do,and then they come back to us. Then we would have some kind of idea of the economics and we can decide what the risk versus trade-off is. Commissioner Levin asked if there was a finite data collection period that we need to do it or does the length of the data collection period differ depending on what we are looking at? Would there be any benefit in doing something that is ongoing over time,forever? Ms. Cutt said she thinks there is tremendous benefit in doing physical monitoring surveys over the summer more frequently than every 1,000 feet along the shoreline. Commissioner Levin said how many claimers,and Penny said indefinitely because if a named storm effects our beach, FEMA will provide funds to replace the loss volume of sand,and so the better data you have, if you have current data for what the condition was prior to the storm and you can justify this as our loss as a result of that named storm, then FEMA money is available to replace that volume of lost sand. That data feeds any future applications but when you do go in for an application you need current data from preferably the summer prior to the application period. Ms. Cutt said to address several of the Mayor's points,there can be funding available for the design and permitting fees of some of these projects. And so it is not only limited to construction of the actual project,there is normally some funding available,and Dade County scores very high because Dade County has so much public beach access. So being part of the Dade County Project means the holidays within that project typically get the 49.8%cost ratio from the State. Another thing to consider is the cost of structures can sometimes be more than the cost of a small beach nourishment project. There was a comment earlier that we may be able to afford a structure but not a project, that depends on what we are looking at. The permitting of that structure then within itself with the NEPA Environmental Impact Statement is a grueling process. Mayor Scholl said the argument would be that structures may have a longer term solution, the beach could all be gone within a year or two but the structure might have a longer life but that is what the State would hopefully tell us. Penny said right, and the sand when we do these sand replacements its sacrificial sand, a lot of municipalities like to look at it these days as maintaining the potholes from the roads. Commissioner Aelion said these are as advocacy too. The validity is basically when it is approached at a Federal level, he understands the permitting requires but as far as using 13 Summary Minutes:Special City Commission Meeting November 13,2015 City of Sunny Isles Beach,Florida another tool is that, you had a six-year spread between the first and the second, is it that we are an entity like yourself and repeat,or progression of study? Ms. Cutt said the two studies they did, Phase I and Phase II, we are analyzing what is going on in the beach, basically the sand budget for the City, and so those do periodically need to be updated so you understand what is going on within your municipal boundaries,and if we had more physical monitoring data they would be even more informative. That is just part of your overall beach strategy, that is not necessary something that is going to feed a particular lobbying effort. Your lobbying effort will probably be focused more at the County and the State level then the Federal government to be more bang for your buck and more potentially effective. Those will be more on targeted projects specific, so the Newport Pier if you wanted to try to get the County to cost share in the Newport Pier Project and to have the information that is going to mitigate this hot spot and the County nourishes the beach in the City and the hot spot is appearing and we are not sure where that equilibrium is and we don't quite know at this point how far back that beach is going to continue to erode. And so is it in its new equilibrium,we are not sure, and so it is in the County's best interest to find a structure that is going to hold the beach in a solid location so that they don't have to come in after every storm and mitigate that hot spot. Similarly,the north end of the City is an even bigger area because it is a worse hot spot but it would take more dollars to fix. If we prove that the cost benefit is there, that the cost of trucking in sand from an outland mine at $45 a cubic yard in place is more than the cost to construct those structures, and those structures are going to reduce the frequency that that shoreline needs to be nourished by x amount and we can show the cost benefit is there then the County will take you seriously and consider cost sharing then. And then that same information is used for the State when we submit for design and permitting funding, and then ultimately for construction funding. Mayor Scholl said based on that he thinks it is up to staff to come back to us and give us a little more information, he wants to see numbers, he wants to see a quantitative breakdown. Ms. Cutt said that they have provided proposals for a cost benefit analysis for a structural evaluation of the existing structure at the north end to see what is going on with them. Have they subsided, are they functional at all, are they having an effect on the beach? We have a pending proposal for a cost benefit analysis to evaluate whether for their structural solution should be considered and for assessment of a structure under the Pier, and so those they already have. Mayor Scholl said the summer analysis, if it is not too costly but it sounds like a no brainer to him because we are basically creating the data base because we know eventually we are going to have a storm and it is going to be ugly. At least if we have the data, the regular shore analysis sounds like under any circumstances we should probably be doing because we know within the next ten(10)years something is going to happen,and that is going to be money well spent because then we are going to have the data to argue with FEMA. If you don't know then we will be making improper measurements and FEMA will not buy that data because they are going to come up with every reason to turn you down. But if you walk in with concrete data, you have kind of built your house out of bricks at that point. But that is more like fixing the potholes or making sure we have the preventative maintenance piece in place at some level. Ms. Cutt said we can also check at the beginning of each summer as to whether the County plans to do a survey that summer and stagger our survey transect to fall between the County because like she said,the Pier falls between survey monuments, and so trying to get data, and that is why Jordan traced shorelines on google earth, you know we had no data to analyze. 14 l Summary Minutes:Special City Commission Meeting November 13,2015 City of Sunny Isles Beach,Florida I ' Commissioner Aelion said on the rebuild or restructuring of the Haulover Park, one of the intended construction is the replacement of the jetty to a pier,how do you feel that is going to impact? Ms. Cutt said it is not going to impact the City, they are actually the engineer for that and so she is pretty familiar with that project. What is being proposed is to extend the existing jetty and maybe reorient it a little bit and make that area a better sand trap because right now a lot of sand is being lost off shore and being locked inshore, and so we call the offshore the flood shore, and inshore the ebb shore, or the reverse but some of that sand is just getting lost and so once it gets on the inshore, the sandbar inside Haulover Inlet that everybody is so familiar with, it colonize the seagrass including the threatened Johnson Seagrass and we can't recover that sand. It also has contaminated to some extent with all the silt and sediment that comes out of all the canals in Dade County, and so it can't be excavated and placed on the beach. A lot of that sand gets trapped in the Intracoastal and it channels in the area and so they do dredge it from the channels and place some of that on the down drift beach. But the way that project is being designed it will extend the jetty and change the shape a little bit so it acts as a better sand trap and then the Pier will get connected to the end of the new Jetty and extend out from there. What that is going to do is allow us to come in and cut the beach so dredge some of the material that is stacking up on the north side of the Inlet and place it in Bal Harbour because where you get a lot of sand from, is what is going on in Broward south of Port Everglades and then it stacks up at Bal Harbour. The Corps doesn't come in very often and dredge and bypass that sand,they come in periodically but not as often as Mother Nature and Bal Harbour would like to see it. Commissioner Aelion said that Haulover has a very healthy white beach,does this mean that eventually some of it would be lost? Ms. Cutt said the way it is designed is to come to a beach that is not quite as white as it is but doesn't adversely affect the public benefits there. Obviously the Parks Department in Dade County wouldn't allow for the project to be designed so that it would cause that beach to be very narrow. The sand is always moving with a net movement to the south and it is always going to stack up there, and when it is stacked up and it can't compound it is going to be lost and we don't want to lose that valuable beach quality sand. We want to move that sand across the Inlet as much as we can. So the way those Inlet bypassing projects are designed, there is a lot of coastal engineering modeling that goes into it to ensure that it is not going to have an adverse effect to any of the adjacent shorelines. Mayor Scholl said he was having breakfast about six (6) months ago with the Mayor of Bal Harbour Martin Packard and he was telling him about this pumping project that was going to pump the beach from Haulover. Mayor Scholl said to him that is our sand,you can't take our sand, you have got to pay us for it. Then it dawned on him after he learned all of this stuff that it wasn't our sand, we don't have sand manufacturing device on the north end of our City, and so our sand is somebody else's sand and it all floats out. Ms. Cutt said that Broward County did look at buying the glass pulverizing equipment to make the glass look like sand. Commissioner Aelion said in Asia or beaches of other countries, they tried it and it was very successful. Ms. Cutt said Broward County found it not to be cost effective,they would have to import glass of the right colors from all these other municipalities and other states but it is funny because she shows people a baggie of that sand and ask them what it is and they say it is sand. 15 1 • Summary Minutes:Special City Commission Meeting November 13,2015 City of Sunny Isles Beach,Florida Commissioner Levin said if we were to put a mitigation device underneath the Pier,how far to the north would it effect the sand? Would it go all the way back to the City or just within a few hundred feet of where it is? Ms. Cutt said their engineers can design it to do whatever you want, but they can't get permits to do whatever you want. Basically the way we would have to design it is to replicate the historical shoreline that was there because if it is going to have effects that go all the way to the north end of the City,then it is going to start the down drift effect. Mayor Scholl said yes, it is to slow it down. Mayor Scholl thanked Jordan and Penny and said that he thinks the City Manager has clear direction, and City Manager Russo said yes. ' 5. ADJOURNMENT Commissioner Aelion moved and Commissioner • , seconded a motion to adjourn the meeting, and Mayor Scholl adjourned it at 11: i a.m. R'espectfull'y submitted by: Appre ed by th- City Commission on Dec. 17, 2015 e. Jane A.\Hines, MMC; City Clerk George H choll, Mayor J n 16 II I i Item Coversheet Page 1 of 1 o�`/'°"E1.m City of Sunny Isles Beach " n 18070 Collins Avenue 1: Sunny Isles Beach,Florida 33160 P y< OV�° ;� (305)947-0606 City Hall o.,•.,w (305)949-3113 Fax MEMORANDUM TO: The Honorable Mayor and City Commission VIA: Christopher J. Russo,City Manager FROM: Jane A. Hines, MMC,City Clerk DATE: 12/17/2015 RE: Summary Minutes for the November 13,2015 City Commission Meeting RECOMMENDATION: Attached for your consideration are the Summary Minutes for the Special City Commission Meeting held on November 13,2015. REASONS: N/A ATTACHMENTS: Description Summary Minutes Item Number:3.A. • • http://sunnyisles.novusagenda.com/AgendaWeb/CoverSheet.aspx?ItemID=1805 12/8/2015 I