Steps to a new solution

Standing on top of the seawall in front of his house, Will Collins looks down at the beach below or, more accurately, the lack thereof.

In three years, 1,175 feet of beach has been swept back out into the Gulf of Mexico, and Collins is afraid the effects will continue to get worse until his greatest fears are realized — both his beach and his house will be gone.

The year is 1994. Collins lives on Casey Key.

The beachfront today on Casey Key behind Collins’ home looks nothing like it did 20 years ago.

“I could stand near the corner of my home and look straight down at the Gulf below,” said Collins. “But now we have a beach and our homes are secure.”

Collins’ beach has been saved, thanks to a former Longboat Key resident and Sarasota contractor, Fred Derr, whose company, Fred Derr & Co. Inc., installed a soil cement-step revetment solution on Casey Key’s beach in 1994.

“Because of the permit delays, a beach that had 1,200 feet when we started (to obtain a permit) had only 25 feet left of sand when construction began,” Derr said.

Completed in 1995, the $600,000 project is still doing its job. The beach is intact.

Derr is confident the same solution will work to combat Longboat’s north-end erosion. Derr is so confident, in fact, that he met with Town Manager Bruce St. Denis two-and-a-half years ago to present his plan for Longboat’s beach. Derr said St. Denis told him he’d get back to him.

But that phone call is still almost three years in the making. Regardless, Derr is undeterred.

After hearing the town was originally seeking an island-wide beach project that would cost taxpayers $45 million and will now ask voters in March to approve a $16 million project for the north end of the island, Derr met with Commissioner David Brenner last week to discuss his solution.

His solution is different than the alternative Sandgrabber and sand-bypass systems that have previously been proposed. His evidence lies in three different instances in which his revetment solution helped protect land and restore severely eroded areas of Casey Key.

How it happened
In fall 1987, three property owners in the 300 block of North Casey Key Road approached Derr with a request to design and build a structure that would protect the beach road adjacent to their properties and maintain access to their beach.

For years, these residents watched the road crumble away and the beach disappear when a major storm impacted Casey Key.

Previously, Derr had received a contract with Sarasota County to build a rock revetment there.

It was the county’s solution to the problem.

“While we were putting rocks out there, a resident approached me and asked if there wasn’t a better way to solve the problem,” Derr said. “The residents were sick and tired of Sarasota County just rebuilding the road and placing rocks in front of the road to protect it. It wasn’t a workable solution.”

After three months of research, Derr came across a beach-preservation method called soil cement-step revetment.

The revetments consists of a series of concrete slabs that are placed on top of each other in front of the eroding beach; the slabs look like concrete steps. The revetments had been used to protect severely eroded areas in the Gaspe Peninsula in Quebec, Canada, on the Atlantic Ocean shoreline and in drainage canals in Arizona to prevent flash flooding. Those revetments are still in place more than 50 years later.

The concrete steps work to decrease the waves’ energy as they roll up on shore, decreasing their velocity and helping to hold sand that would normally be swept out to shore.

The top slabs of the projects are wider, stronger and anchored to something heavier, such as seawalls and roads, to prevent water from getting behind the structures.

In October 1988, after a year of back-and-forth discussions with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP), Derr received an experimental permit to build an 810-foot-long revetment that weighed 4,522 tons upon completion. The project was completed in January 1989.

“It’s been 22 years since I built that first one and the county has not spent a nickel to rebuild that road since,” Derr said.

Three property owners paid for that first project, which cost $300 per foot to build. The total cost of the project was approximately $250,000.

The project was so successful that in 1991, Collins and four of his neighbors in the 2700 block of Casey Key approached Derr about building a revetment to save their beach and, more importantly, their homes.

“It seemed like a no-brainer to us,” Collins said. “We needed help.”

Derr agreed.

“It was a more serious situation,” said Derr, who said three of those five homes were in danger of falling into the Gulf if one more major storm were to hit.

For that project, Derr built a 17-step revetment that was 640 feet long, for a cost of $607,000.

“It took us three years to get that permit,” said Derr, who said the three-year wait for the permit almost cost those residents their homes.

Today, those residents have a 100-foot wide beach in front of their homes, compared to 25 feet of beach that was left right before the project began.

Inbetween the timing of those two homeowner-funded projects, Sarasota County approached Derr in 1990 and sought permission to use his design to permit a third revetment in the 800 block of North Casey Key Road.

“In Casey Key, the beaches have accreted,” Derr said. “The roads are still intact and the homes are still there.”

Sarasota County Coastal Systems Manager Laird Wreford doesn’t deny that the three revetment projects on Casey Key are a benefit.

“That area and those projects, for a host of unknown reasons, have been very successful,” Wreford said.

But Wreford isn’t sure the revetments will work everywhere.

“To a degree, it’s a luck-of-the-draw with those types of projects,” Wreford said. “In other areas, those projects might not work and cause you to lose a beach. But, in this case, whether it was the design or where it was located, it’s considered a success.”

Similar solution?
After a one-hour meeting two years ago with St. Denis and Public Works Director Juan Florensa, St. Denis said he would be in touch with Derr after the town’s beach engineer, Boca Raton-based Coastal Planning & Engineering, reviewed Derr’s projects.

Derr said he’s not surprised he still hasn’t heard from St. Denis.

“The state and most beach engineers don’t like to harden the beach,” Derr said. “But I would say we enhanced the beach by creating a beach that wasn’t there before.”

St. Denis, meanwhile, doesn’t believe the revetment would work on Longboat.

“Revetments are another form of a seawall, which will protect a property but is not meant to hold a beach,” St. Denis said. “It doesn’t fix the problem of having a beach.”

Derr cringes when he hears beach-renourishment project numbers such as a $45 million beach project and a $16 million structure solution for the north end being suggested.

Derr thinks the town should consider building a 1,500-foot revetment project that would begin at the Longbeach seawall and wrap around North Shore Road and end near Beer Can Island.

In total, Derr believes the project would cost taxpayers $1,100 per foot, for a total project cost of approximately $1 million.

“If you spend this money and you don’t have to renourish the beach, isn’t it worth a shot before spending all the rest of that money?” he asks.

The hurdles
Derr understands the risk involved.

Despite his portfolio including three successful Casey Key projects, Derr says that FDEP fought him and the homeowners every step of the way.

It was only until the homes were just 25 feet from the Gulf that the state bowed to political pressure, Derr said, and granted his company a permit.

“When homes almost fell in the Gulf, homeowners started calling the governor’s office and the project was finally granted a permit,” Derr said.

And even though the projects have a 100% success rate, Derr said he has received no credit from state officials and was snubbed at a Florida Shore and Beaches Preservation Association conference in 2000, when he was given the last spot on the last day of the conference to make a presentation.

“Everyone had already headed home,” Derr said. “I got the worst slot of the conference for projects I built with a 100% success rate.”

Derr said he thinks it has a lot to do with money.

“All I can say is that when it comes to Florida beaches, it’s a good ol’ boys club,” Derr said. “They want you to just keep putting sand down on the beach that they know will keep washing away.”

Derr says that if large sand projects aren’t performed along Florida’s shores, both beach engineers and the state would lose money in both permit and engineering fees.

“Think about it,” Derr said. “If revetments were built and solved the problem for good, a lot of money that’s typically spent on beach projects for sand goes out the window.”

FDEP, which was contacted for this story, declined to have an official available to comment for this story at press time.

Town, beach engineers sound off
St. Denis, meanwhile, maintains that if revetments worked everywhere, the state would already be permitting them.

CP&E President Tom Campbell said that he did look into the revetments at St. Denis’ request years ago.

“Revetments are less expensive forms of seawalls that offer some stability but won’t hold a beach long-term,” Campbell said. “The main reason we rely on beach-renourishment projects is because the state prefers sand to structures.”

Brenner, however, refuses to believe that projects such as Derr’s can’t be considered.

“It appears that (Derr’s) project has demonstrated no adverse environmental impact, has enhanced the sea-turtle habitat in that area and there is no evidence of down drift erosion from those three projects,” Brenner said. “Sand renourishment is all the permitting agencies want you to do, and I refuse to believe that has to be the status quo.”

Collins, meanwhile, said his home would be in the Gulf right now if it wasn’t for Derr’s project.

Collins calls Derr after every major storm that’s come ashore since the revetment was built 16 years ago to tell him the solution has continued to work.

“You shouldn’t be told that you have to put sand or rocks down in front of your home when you know it’s not going to work,” Collins said.

Derr said he’s more than willing to work with the town. But if that reaches a dead end, Derr said the homeowners of 360 North and Longbeach condominiums could lobby support for a similar project, pool their resources together and fund the project themselves.

For instance, if the approximately 85 unit owners of Longbeach funded Derr’s proposed $1 million project, it would cost them $11,764 apiece.

“I’m not saying it would be easy,” Derr said. “But the end result worked wonders for these Casey Key residents.”

Longbeach President Bob Appel said he’s intrigued by Derr’s suggestion.

“I know the state makes it very difficult to try new things,” Appel said. “But we would be happy to try some things that would be more aesthetically pleasing than groins or breakwaters and give peace of mind to our owners.”

Derr says his passion lies in building these sand-holding structures.

“I have built a lot of bridges and roads over the years, but that stuff is boring,” Derr said. “These revetment projects were my labor of love. I don’t like it when people tell me I can’t do something. Well, I did it, it works and it could work on Longboat Key.”

By the numbers
1,200 — The width in feet of a Casey Key beach in the 2700 block of North Casey Key Road in 1991.
25 — The width in feet of a Casey Key beach in the 2700 block of North Casey Key Road when a soil cement-step revetment project began in 1994.
17 — The number of concrete steps in a soil cement-step revetment project in the 2700 block of North Casey Key Road.
4,522 — The weight in tons of a soil cement-step revetment project that was built in the 300 block of North Casey Key Road.
1,500 — The length in feet of a soil cement-step revetment project that Fred Derr thinks will work to stop erosion on the north end of Longboat Key.
$1 million — The amount of money Derr thinks a soil cement-step revetment project would cost on the north end of Longboat Key.

Contact Kurt Schultheis at [email protected]