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Constant erosion eats away Egmont

In August, Egmont Key will receive a refill: 1-million cubic yards of sand. The one-time project is a blessing, but not enough to rescue the slowly disappearing island, erosion experts and island advocates say.

By SHADI RAHIMI
Published June 11, 2006

EGMONT KEY - Every day, Tom Watson zooms across bumpy, sandy terrain in a golf cart. He stops to uproot exotic plants or check in on sea turtle nests, which make him beam like a proud father.

But the sight of the receding beach where they're buried makes him cry.

Watson manages the state park on Egmont Key, a narrow, 380-acre stretch of island just south of Fort De Soto Park. It's been his home for the past 40 years.

Every time a storm stirs Watson from sleep, the rough winds and rain battering his bungalow also deliver a jolting reminder of the battle he and park advocates have been waging - and losing - against Mother Nature.

With each passing hurricane season, the beach erodes further, faster.

Since its sands were replenished by the Army Corps of Engineers six years ago, the 1.6-mile-long island has receded the length of two football fields. Two historic concrete artillery batteries are now submerged off its southern tip.

"I come out here, and really, tears roll down my cheeks," Watson said. "We need more sand."

In August, its beach will receive another refill: 1-million cubic yards of sand dredged from the Egmont Channel by the corps during its regular maintenance of the channel. Also, Fort De Soto will receive 300,000 cubic yards of sand.

The one-time project is a blessing, but not nearly enough to rescue the slowly disappearing island, erosion experts and island advocates say.

"We stand to lose so much," said Barbara Schmidt of the Egmont Key Alliance, a park advocacy group. "Without the sand to stabilize the island, there will be nothing left."

Snorkelers who take the 20-minute ferry ride from the pier at Fort De Soto are told to look for the gun batteries among the fish that swim along Egmont Key's southern tip.

"Because of erosion, the island is shrinking dramatically," the ferry operator, Jeff Stewart, told visitors on a recent morning trip to the key.

Rains and waves flood the island every year with up to 4 feet of water. Drastic changes in tidal flow from the dredging of the Egmont Channel and bridge construction have quickened the island's erosion process, said Nicole Elko, Pinellas County's coastal coordinator.

The rate at which Egmont Key is eroding is alarming, she said.

"It's actually eroding at quite a rapid rate - it's doubled back on itself over the past 100 years," she said.

That means less beach for thousands of nesting shorebirds and sea turtles. And the threat of drowning for the three historic artillery batteries at its northern end, which once sat about 200 yards inland.

They are now lapped by greenish waves, a sight that alarms Schmidt, the park's volunteer historian.

"I don't just see this island as a part of our county or state history," Schmidt said. "It's national history."

Egmont Key was fortified during the Spanish-American War to defend Tampa from the Spanish.

By 1910, the island's Fort Dade consisted of 70 buildings, including a movie theater, with water, sewers and electricity to serve several hundred troops. The fort has since moved to the west with erosion.

Its brick streets and some buildings remain. Schmidt, a soft-spoken retiree, lovingly posts and reposts signs she's made about their history.

She began laminating them after someone used one as toilet paper.

The first structure built on the island, in 1858, is also known as the first lighthouse to be erected between St. Marks and Key West.

Damaged by a hurricane the same year it was built, the lighthouse was reconstructed a decade later and is still used by the Coast Guard to help guide ships to and from Tampa.

Its radio beacon, towering 133 feet above Watson's one-story white bungalow, flashes every 15 seconds.

"We get tremendous winds and hard-driving rain," he said. "The low spot by the lighthouse fills up, and it becomes its own little island."

Watson is a park manager for the state Department of Environmental Protection, which is splitting the cost of the $680,000 sand renourishment project with Hillsborough County.

It's been a long time coming, said Watson, who has an annual budget of $20,000 to maintain the park, which is home to a 5.5-acre wildlife sanctuary.

The park's volunteer-run advocacy group bought him the $6,400 beige golf cart he uses to navigate the island.

Six years ago, the beach received 300,000 cubic yards of sand. Standing atop the concrete Battery Mellon, at the island's northern tip, Watson pointed to the ever-closer shore.

"Before putting the sand here, the waves were just crashing into the battery, just slamming it," he said. "It was falling into the gulf."

Whenever a big storm threatens during hurricane season, Watson typically evacuates the island, along with the vessel pilots who reside part time on the island in bungalows.

After one storm last year, Watson returned to survey the damage by canoe.

A storm years earlier caused the former power plant to crumble. Once near the center of the island, it now sits mostly in water.

"I just hope every time that I'm not going to see a gun battery caved in or more drowned turtle eggs," he said.

The beach replenishment project will help the island get back to the size it was six years ago, experts say. But it is not enough to save it.

As the sands of the island slip further away, so does its natural terrain and its history, Watson said.

"The batteries were made to withstand battleships," he said. "But they can't withstand the gulf waves."

[Last modified June 11, 2006, 05:19:19]