Keeping Midnight Pass wild is a win for all, says director of Sarasota Bay Estuary Program

Many boaters in Sarasota are celebrating the reopening of Midnight Pass, a coastal inlet that was piled high with sand in the 1980s to protect two pricey homes near Siesta Key. That closure caused the water quality of Little Sarasota Bay to deteriorate.

Hurricanes Helene and Milton blew open the waterway, allowing seawater to once again flush out Little Sarasota Bay, solving decades of gridlock on the issue of whether, or how, to dredge it.

Some want the Army Corps of Engineers to dredge the area even more, in order to keep Midnight Pass open. But David Tomasko, director of the Sarasota Bay Estuary Program, says that effort may go nowhere.

He spoke with WUSF's Kerry Sheridan about the environmental issues at play.

What do you think of the reopening of Midnight Pass? Do you think it's a good thing to have that exchange of Gulf water, that tidal exchange, restored after some 40 years?

TOMASKO: Little Sarasota Bay changed quite substantially when that tidal connection was severed. But it didn't become dead. It became different.

It's kind of a hot spot for juvenile stages of fish. It's a really good place to go see manatees. That said, now that you have that tidal connection, we think it's actually going to be a good thing for water quality, because Little Sarasota Bay has problems with water quality when it rains a lot, and we've been getting a lot of rain last couple of years, and so we have this problem with oxygen in the bottom of Little Sarasota Bay that we don't have anywhere else when it rains a lot. Big fish can swim away from this low oxygen but small fish that live on the bottom of Little Sarasota Bay, they just die.

So what do you think of the push by a lot of boaters to get the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to dredge open a north channel and keep Midnight Pass open?

I don't think that that would be permittable. There are seagrass meadows all throughout that area where the Midnight Pass channel was, and so the idea of having to reconnect it to the north, not only are there a lot of seagrass meadows there, there's an awful lot of manatees that use that area. It is very easy to find manatees in that area to the north that people want to dredge.

Anything you do that increases boating access is going to require an update to the manatee protection plan. Anything that you do to dig up seagrass, you're going to have to mitigate for it there. So I think the question is not what boaters want — and I'm a boater myself. I've been a boater for 30 years — it is what does the water need?

So what are the alternatives to dredging it further? I mean, would it stay open if it were just left alone?

The good thing about how this opened is it shows that you can get tidal exchanges without a necessarily damaging approach. So 15 years ago, Sarasota County proposed an approach that didn't even come close to getting its permits. It was a much more damaging approach than what would make sense. And I think what this is showing is that you don't have to dredge a 14-foot-deep channel all the way the intracoastal waterway to get tidal exchange.

So if you could, manage it as kind of a wild pass, realizing that you may have to go in and maintain it. There are passes that have been created by hurricanes that have existed for years without the Army Corps coming in and digging things up. Irma Pass on Shell Key, that's just north of Bunces Pass, around Fort De Soto. That's been open for seven years, it's never been dredged. It just opened with a hurricane — Hurricane Irma — and it's still there.

So if people can accept a breach through the barrier island that allows water to move back and forth, that doesn't necessarily allow 31-foot boats to go back and forth, then you have it. If you care about water moving back and forth, you've got it. Take the win.

Anything beyond what exists right now is going to be expensive, and it's going to be difficult to permit, and it may be a physical impact that's not necessary.

And do you see any downsides to having this pass reopened, is there any negative implication for the environment?

It's not a black and white issue. I think some people like to think that it's like, 'it was dead, now it's breathing,' and that's just not true. You used to have a problem from oxygen when it rained a lot. Now you're more likely to have a problem from red tide, and it's also easier for storm surge to get into Little Sarasota Bay. So it's kind of like, plusses and minuses.

What do you think of the house that remains there, the one built for Pasco Carter in the 1970s? It's right on the beach, it looks like a bite has been taken out of it. The other house at the center of the controversy was demolished years ago.

That's one of the things that people need to take into account as well. Sea level rise is happening. Climate change isn't a future scenario. We're living in it. We're in the beginning of climate change.

We don't know where it's going to lead but those barrier islands are migrating eastward in our area, and so one of the good things that comes out of this is, don't build a house on a barrier island next to an inlet and expect that you should be able to have the pass and your house both coexist. So 40 years ago, people were thinking climate change as a future scenario. Now it's happening.