ST. JOHNS COUNTY, Fla. — What should be done with a beach that continues to have the waves wash around homes?
St. Johns County leaders are weighing the option of buying out the property owners so that taxpayer money doesn’t have to keep paying to repair the dunes and maintain roads.
That question bubbled up in this week's St. Johns County Commission meeting.
Two weeks ago, when a nor'easter blasted the First Coast, the waves washed over a beach dune in the Summer Haven area.
It created a new inlet connecting the ocean to the Summer Haven River.
"That’s not surprising," Tina Fox told First Coast News. Her father built a home on Old A1A in the 1980s. Since then, her family has seen ocean waves rush over Old A1A and pass by the homes several times.
But they still loved the house.
Wistfully, she said, "If you go to that house and stand on that deck you see a beach with nobody on it. It's just so private."
But after hurricanes and nor’easters, the waves washed out the road, making it only accessible by four-wheel drive. It left risky situations for emergency vehicles, and there's no way garbage trucks can go down the sandy road that runs along the coast.
Eventually last year, Fox’s father sold the house, partly because of the lack of access to the road.
"The road wasn’t being maintained, and it was a county road. My parents paid taxes," Fox said.
This latest breach of the dune is a big one.
It's big enough to keep the five houses north of it from being reachable by even a four-wheel drive. And it's big enough for county commissioners to decide to research ways to buy out the property owners.
One estimate to rebuild the dune is $1.1 million.
"If my father still owned that home he was in," Fox said," I don’t’ think they could pay him enough to buy him out because he put so much work into the house."
Fox wonders if the 25 homeowners on Old A1A would take a buy out form the county.
She said, "They need to come together with the people who are still there and come up with a way to fix the road or do something."