I recently participated on a panel discussing Midnight Pass. I was joined by ManaSota-88 Chairman Glenn Compton, Sarasota Bay Estuary Program (SBEP) Director Dave Tomasko, and Midnight Pass Society President Mike Holderness.
Near the end, the moderator, former County Commissioner Jon Thaxton, asked the panelists what he hoped could be answered with a simple “Yes” or “No”: “Are you in favor of hardening the shoreline around Midnight Pass?”
I immediately answered, “No!”
Dr. Tomasko followed my opening with “My opinion is … (laughter) followed by “I think it is a non-starter. That’s a no.”
Glen Compton: ‘That’s a definite no. There’s no permitting that would allow for that.”
Then Mike Holderness weighed in: “Well, my answer — I’m a very strong no, because walls cause erosion and we don’t want to harm Casey Key. Casey Key can benefit from a stable natural pass. What we need to do is just help Mother Nature correct what we did. She helped us by opening it, so that’s all we need to do.”
I clasped my hands to my head when he added, “Now, there might be a small training groin needed on the north side. However, I’m a no.”
Why was my ‘No!” so instantaneous and emphatic? Because I have lived through the past 40 years and clearly remember what the public consensus has been throughout that time.
Following the closure of the pass and the failed attempts to reopen it, the County Commission convened a blue-ribbon panel, on which I served. Our recommendation: Open the pass in a big way and see what happens. It was an attempt to reset the system back to the ever-changing, but more or less stable condition that had existed for decades. The County Commission supported that approach, but the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) wouldn’t permit it.
The situation festered for years. Then, in 1995, the County Commission convened the Little Sarasota Bay Forums. I was also participating in them when the following consensus was reached (and adopted by the County Commission): “Any pass in the former Midnight Pass area, however reopened, should be a natural pass and the system shall be allowed to respond to natural barrier island processes, including shoaling, pass movement, erosion, sea level rise, overwash, etc.”
And currently the official Restore Midnight Pass website clearly states, “We believe it’s time to restore Midnight Pass! Restoring the area to its original, natural state.”
The website is actively soliciting donations based on this “original natural” vision; yet, a stabilizing groin is antithetical to the idea of a restored pass, because restoration means putting it back the way it was, and Midnight Pass never had a groin, training or otherwise.
Sarasota County has only three passes. Venice Inlet is an industrial-strength sluice dominated by giant boulders, New Pass has its looming bridge, and Big Pass is accessible to the public only on the north side.
Consequently, modest Midnight Pass is our only pass that conveys a wild and natural feeling, and its human scale makes it the friendliest pass.
As a result, in just a few months Midnight Pass has become a VERY popular destination for power boaters and paddlers. It’s the hot new thing. It changes tide by tide, and its sandy peregrinations are documented almost daily on social media. It’s impossible to visit the same Midnight Pass twice. Yet, people are justifiably concerned it may wander off again or grow too shallow.
Dr. Tomasko of the Sarasota Bay Estuary Program offered a possible model from Collier County — tiny Clam Pass. Collier County apparently has a protocol for determining when Clam Pass is exhibiting risky behavior, and then its staff intervenes with prompt dredging to re-set the system.
Sarasota County leaders would be well advised to invite some Clam Pass managers to come for a visit and explore with them the possibility of an unstabilized, natural pass — the kind favored by the Midnight Pass Society (and what residents have agreed upon for the past four decades).
Jono Miller of Sarasota has been chair of the Sarasota County Environmentally Sensitive Lands Oversight Committee for many years.
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