DREDGING PERMITTED, SAND SWAP PROHIBITED: Is eroded Holiday Isle ‘dead in the water' or is this ‘a victory for all'?

Destin harbor could see dredging begin before the end of November, now that a legal challenge to the dredging has been resolved, City Public Services Director Steve Schmidt says.

“We see this as a victory for all,” Okaloosa Island resident Dave Sherry told The Log this week. Dave and Rebecca Sherry and John and Margaret Donovan had challenged the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ state permit for the dredging, on the grounds it didn’t guarantee the Corps would deposit the dredged sand on Okaloosa Island.

The new permit says no sand will be placed east of the harbor channel, except what’s needed to rebuild the jetties to their original design specifications. For Holiday Isle homeowners who’d hoped the 200,000 to 300,000 cubic yards of sand expected from the dredging would be placed on their severely eroded beaches, Sherry’s claim of “victory for all” seemed hollow.

“We’re dead in the water, so to speak,” Jetty East General Manager Jerry Stalnaker told The Log this week. “We’re not happy they’re taking the sand and not letting us have any.”

Jetty East, Destin Pointe and several other parts of Holiday Isle have seen storms destroy their beaches the past few years; Jetty East has lost all its beach, leaving its tennis courts and parking lot taking damage from strong waves. Sand from several small dredging projects has been placed on Holiday Isle, but it hasn’t solved the problem.

Okaloosa County and Destin have applied for a state beach-restoration permit covering both Okaloosa Island and Destin, but the $20 million project faces multiple court challenges. Restoration opponents charge that the special assessment levied on them for part of the cost breaks Florida law; that Okaloosa Island assessments are unfairly high; that the sand source is substandard compared to the area’s white beaches; and that since the edge of a restored beach becomes public property, restoration denies the owners their property rights.

A “unified group” of Holiday Isle owners, both for and against restoration, formed this year to negotiate an alternative. The group proposed that when the Corps dredges next month, the sand be deposited on the Holiday Isle properties that need it, thereby sparing restoration opponents from participating.

That didn’t go over well with the Sherrys, who say that while Okaloosa Island isn’t eroded, if their property doesn’t receive the sand, eventual erosion is inevitable.

“(Destin resident) Larry Hines and (City Manager Greg) Kisela separately asked us to stand aside and let them take all the sand from the dredge to Holiday Isle,” Dave Sherry told The Log earlier this month. “We responded that we would not stand aside and let them take our sand. We can’t. It is the life blood of our beach, Eglin’s beach, and beaches to our west.”

Under the state’s Inlet Management Plan, dredged sand is supposed to go to the west side of Marler Bridge. Sherry said that’s the direction sand would normally be carried by the tide if the East Pass and the jetties didn’t disrupt the flow, so he and his co-petitioners are only defending their right to “our natural sand supply.”

The city has hired a consultant to review the tidal and sand flow and see if the evidence justifies changing the management plan to send some of the sand east of the harbor. While the review isn’t finished, the consultants said earlier this year that it looks as if normal wave action carries sand to both sides of the East Pass.

Sherry said he’ll challenge any change in the plan on the grounds it’s “an attempt to make the science twist to fit the desire outcome.” He’s accused the Holiday Isle owners of selfishly trying to hog the sand so that they don’t have to spend their own money on beach restoration; some Holiday Isle representatives say the same of him.

“To me it’s a power play,” Stalnaker said. “It’s extremely selfish of them. They said they didn’t need any sand, and now they want every grain.”

The scope of dredging will range from 100 feet wide and 8 feet deep in the eastern portion of Old Pass Lagoon Channel to 180 feet wide and 22 feet deep where the main channel extends from the Gulf of Mexico to the outer reaches of the jetties.

Schmidt said the dredging will probably take the tip off Norriego Point in the process because it’s extended into East Pass: “You can stand on the tip in the middle of East Pass and not get your feet wet.”