Helene reopened Midnight Pass, but for how long?

Sometimes Mother Nature stitches a silver lining in a blanket of devastation, and she eventually always takes back what belongs to her.

And now a group of volunteers armed with shovels are trying to help her keep it.

Only weeks after the Sarasota County Commission instructed staff to investigate a legislative solution to permit the reopening of Midnight Pass, nature took care of the job.

At least temporarily.

Raging storm surge whipped up by Hurricane Helene cut a swath through the former inlet between Siesta and Casey keys, closed under considerable controversy in 1983 when two property owners filled it in, cutting off the exchange of water between the Gulf of Mexico and the inland waterway resulting in decades of poor water quality in Little Sarasota Bay.

Photo by John Lewis

“Nature does whatever it wants, especially when a storm is that powerful,” said Siesta Key resident Mike Evanoff. “It pushed it back open, but for the pass to stay open will also be up to Mother Nature.”

Evanoff said although the pass was opened, it may need assistance to remain that way. To maintain the flow through the inlet, channels to the north and south of Little Sarasota Bay must flow freely and may need to be dredged as well.

Volunteers organically organized on social media and arrived at Midnight Pass with shovels to do just that, not so much dredging but working to gradually remove a mound that formed over the decades, sand deposited both by beach renourishment efforts and natural current, according to Midnight Pass advocate Diggy Breiling, who hosts a Facebook page called “I Dig Midnight Pass.” 

The diggers have also created a narrow channel in hopes of facilitating water exchange between the bay and the gulf.

Breiling isn’t the organizer of the shovel brigade, but the diggers have communicated their efforts on his social media page. Ironically perhaps, Diggy is his real name. 

Photo by Bonnie Hammer

“I've been advocating that we lower that mound of sand to more natural levels where it should be brought much closer to the high tide line as opposed to having it 20 feet above the high tide line, which is, I believe, about how high it was before the storm,” Breiling said.

That may be enough, he said, to help restore the natural hydraulic exchange of water between the Gulf of Mexico and Little Sarasota Bay, at least during high tides and other tidal events in order to achieve the objective of improving the water quality in the bay. What Breiling does not support is deeply and widely dredging the inlet for recreational purposes.

“All the shovels that we can muster are not going to open Midnight Pass,” Breiling said. “That's reality. I love that people are out there. I think it's an improvement because when we do have storm events it will facilitate some of the transfer of water into and out of the bay. That mound being lowered in will facilitate some transfer.”

In an email sent to city and county officials, environmental organizations and others, Sarasota Bay Estuary Program Executive Director Dave Tomasko offered a “very rough and preliminary” calculation of what is required to effectively open Midnight Pass — perhaps permanently — based on the status of the inlet last Friday. 

As a former Southwest Florida Water Management District employee, Tomasko wrote that he has experience in such analyses.

“With a 60-foot cross-section (20 feet wide by 3 feet deep) and a current of 1 foot per second, this comes out to an estimated flow rate of 60 cubic feet per second,” Tomasko wrote. “Upon conversion, this translates to about 32 million gallons per day. This does not mean that 32 million gallons of water leaves and/or enters Little Sarasota Bay via this new channel each day because this very rough estimate was made at only one point in time. But it does suggest that the inlet is large enough to move water at a rate that approximated 30 million gallons per day, at least during an outgoing tide.”

Photo by John Lewis

That kind of dredging can’t be done by hand, and it is unknown if Sarasota County has an argument that the state’s moratorium against creating new inlets is invalid as Midnight Pass was reopened by a natural event, if only temporarily, literally holds water.

“So now, the big question is how long will this stay open? And the answer is, we’ll find out,” Tomasko wrote. “Maybe this will stay open for several days, weeks, or months. Or maybe it’s already closed as I write this email. … But it’s also true that it’s not necessarily true that such inlets are doomed to close.”

Evanoff had an up close and personal view of the Midnight Pass both before and after Helene. Just north of the inlet, his beachfront home was in the water on Friday, and he calls it a total loss. He had moved out of the house to another home on Siesta Key and planned to make the beachfront house a rental.

“But hey, we got good fresh water in there, so that's a good thing,” Evanoff said on Friday. “We lost everything there, but at least the pass is open.”