IDA'S AFTERMATH CRASHES INTO CITY HALL: Fishing fleet tells Holiday Isle not to 'drag the fishermen down with you' (UPDATE)

“We’re being shown across the country as a place not to go because of our beach situation,” Holiday Isle resident Larry Hines says. “We have our backs against the wall.”

Hines was one of several homeowners who told the Destin City Council Monday that they had no choice but to hold up the city’s harbor-dredging plan until the Florida Department of Environmental Protection agrees to place some of the dredged sand on Holiday Isle’s eroded beaches.

Charter captains replied that delaying the dredging would be a greater disaster.

“The simple fact is, we can’t wait,” said Capt. George Eller of the Checkmate. “If we tamper with this process or do something to slow it down, we might lose the funding ... There’s a lot of condominiums, there’s a lot of rooms for people to stay in, but there’s only one pass, only one harbor, only one fleet.”

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is scheduled to start dredging within two weeks, removing what Hines has estimated will be 200,000 to 300,000 cubic yards of sand. In October, however, Dave and Rebecca Sherry and John and Margaret Donovan of Okaloosa Island filed to block the Corps’ DEP permit.

Their reason? The permit didn’t guarantee that the sand would be placed on Okaloosa Island, as the DEP’s Inlet Management Plan requires, and the Sherrys and the Donovans said they were worried the DEP would place it on Holiday Isle.

Much of Holiday Isle’s beach has been critically eroded by storms. Last week, Tropical Storm Ida caused hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages.

City Manager Greg Kisela said Monday that the DEP is close to issuing a permit for beach restoration, but it will probably face multiple challenges from Holiday Isle owners who don’t want to participate.

Hines organized a “unified group” of Holiday Isle owners this summer to look for a compromise; using some of the sand from the dredging on the properties that wanted restoration seemed like the answer until the Sherrys and Donovans filed their challenge.

Dave Sherry told The Log that while Okaloosa Island isn’t eroded, diverting sand east makes erosion inevitable. He said the Inlet Management Plan supports his position, and that without the jetties trapping sand, it would naturally flow westward anyway.

The DEP revised the permit to say the sand would go west. Holiday Isle responded last week with its own permit challenge. Destin Pointe’s J.J. Chambers said Monday that while part of Crystal Beach’s waterfront had been restored, Holiday Isle had been pounded for storms for a decade with nothing but a few protective berms being built.

“Everything that happens keeps damaging this area,” Chambers said. “The next one’s going to take the houses out.”

Hines said the dredging could provide them with two-thirds of the sand a major restoration project would produce. He said that state statute 161 requires dredged sand to be placed on neighboring eroded beaches, and that the statute had more legal weight than the DEP’s plan. Kisela said state officials weren’t sure about that.

Kisela said that if the Corps had to wait, the money for the dredging might be diverted to other projects and the city would lose everything.

Eller said that’s why owners should drop their permit challenge until the harbor was dredged, then file again later over where the sand would be placed: “If you can get it changed, I’m all for you, but do you really want to bear the burden of knowing that you have possibly stopped the dredging or delayed it?”

“I don’t want to see houses fall into the Gulf,” said Councilor Kelly Windes, a charter captain, “but you’re trying to drag the fishermen down with you. I don’t think anything’s going to happen in two months — we’ve been fighting for years and it’s not getting closer.”

Councilor Sam Seevers said she was worried that if the DEP went along with Holiday Isle, the Okaloosa Island residents would reinstate their challenge and there’d still be no dredging.

Kisela said the city was looking at alternatives, such as bringing sand from an upland source or borrowing sand from one of the other parcels on Holiday Isle, which would be restored later. Kisela said the owner of one parcel had agreed to that, but it would only provide 20,000 to 40,000 cubic yards.

The city manager added that the city had to show the Corps it was still committed to the dredging.

“We seem to fight more within our own community” than fighting to complete projects, Councilor Jim Wood said, wondering if the Corps would give up and head for some community that has “their ducks in a row.”

The council took no action on the issue. Mayor Craig Barker said state government probably had more authority to resolve such matters.

“This is a lose-lose thing y’all are all proposing,”  said Windes. “We want to turn it around to a win-win. … Let’s find some other avenue than stopping the dredging.”

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DAMAGE REPORT

For the latest photos of damage from Holiday Surf & Racquet Club, click here.

For photos of the cleanup at Destin Pointe, click here.

To see photos from Jetty East and Destin Pointe immediately after the storm, click here.

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MORE OPINIONS

Destin letter writer: Take your head out of the sand, and put it where it is needed
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Destin Log: This is our sand shame
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LETTER: Stop the injustice and take action!

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Reporter Fraser Sherman offered live updates from Monday's City Council meeting. CLICK HERE TO FIND OUT WHAT HAPPENED.