Is Destin dredging a drop in the ocean?
Captains say latest effort falls short
April 22, 2008 - 11:51AM
Fraser Sherman
Dredging the East Pass navigation channel has helped with a tight squeeze, but it hasn’t solved the problem, Destin charter captains say.
“I would have liked to see more,” Captain Kelly Windes, a City Council member said Monday, “but I’m not griping. I think it’s helped us out.”
Last week, North Florida Diversified finished dredging 2,500 cubic yards of sand clogging the navigation channel and deposited it on Norriego Point, to help shore up the beach there against erosion. Sunday, a larger vessel — traveling between jobs in Mobile and Panama City — began a week-long dredging operation that will remove 30,000 to 50,000 cubic yards of sand from outside the channel. That vessel was delayed a week after its main tug failed.
City Manager Greg Kisela told The Log this sand will be deposited at the end of Holiday Isle as a “sand jetty” while the city seeks a state permit to use the sand for a protective berm in severely eroded areas such as Destin Pointe.
The city gave the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers $75,000 last year for the dredging, which is being done under a Corps’ permit. The Corps’ head office, however, delayed the dredging for almost a year. The project finally moved ahead after the Corps received a $229,000 earmark from Congress to carry it out.
The captains The Log spoke to said there is more to be done.
“They did kind of half of what they needed,” Captain Rex Walley of Sailing Adventures said. “They deepened the channel in approximately the north-south direction; they didn’t do anything in the east-west direction ... It’s still a very shallow draft.”
Captain Jim Westbrook of the New Florida Girl said about 20 percent of the sand deposited on the point has already washed back in the water, building up a new sandbar further out.
“It’s spectacularly hilarious,” Westbrook said. “You can tell when high tide comes in what he accomplished — he got some done, but not enough.”
