City Engineers See Lido Beach Erosion First Hand

Sarasota City Engineer Alex DavisShaw meets on the beach with Lido Shores Beach Erosion Committee members

With hurricane season soon upon us and New Pass dredging set to begin in August... Sarasota City Engineer Alex DavisShaw set foot for the first time on our rapidly disappearing beach on Tuesday, April 26, 2016. Ms DavisShaw, along with Sarasota Sustainability Manager Stevie Freeman-Montes, listened as members of the Lido Shores Beach Erosion Committee voiced serious concerns about this past year's unprecedented and sudden loss of dunes and sand.

Richard LaBrie points out how close Pavilion is to edge of dune

DavisShaw promised to include North Lido Beach in ongoing beach monitoring to see what effects the upcoming dredging of New Pass will have on our beach. Beach monitoring routinely occurs on an annual basis. Committee members stressed the urgency of starting beach monitoring immediately, and including North Lido Beach as a separate entity. We also requested that the City share information with Lido Shores residents and perform monitoring at least quarterly, or more often as the situation demands.

DavisShaw says there's more sand in New Pass now than in the past 7-years... and says "opening the Pass is the most important thing we can do to help relieve the pressure" on our relentless sand loss. New Pass was last dredged in 2009. Sand build up over the intervening years has led to closing the pass to navigation and caused diminished tidal flows. With that reduced flow the Pass has drifted southward, and is now directly off North Lido beach, adding to the relentless scouring our beach and sand. DavisShaw believes dredging New Pass and the direct off shore shoal will redirect the tidal flow in a westerly direction and reduce the current flow along our shoreline. Just how soon, and if, that will happen is anyone's guess.

Projected 2016 New Pass dredging path

Committee members pointed out that the dune in front of our Pavilion has receded yet another 18-inches over the past six weeks. In addition to some amount of dry sandy beach, another 12-feet of vegetated dune has been wiped away to date by intensified wave and tidal action.

Our problems began in March, 2015, when several hundred-thousand cubic feet of sand was removed from the protective ebb shoal to the west of North Lido Beach, leaving a gaping 1,800-foot hole in the off shore barrier. That amount of sand from this location had never before been "borrowed." That "borrowed" sand was used to repair and renourish parts of Central and South Lido Key. The shoal dredging, combined with a fierce storm at the beginning of this year... has spurred severe erosion not seen in decades.

Elliott Himelfarb and DavisShaw in front of severely eroded dunes

DavisShaw stopped short of agreeing with that assessment. She pointed out that other areas of the Keys have been similarly affected by erosion from unprecedented storms over the past year.

She also intimated that Longboat Key's three-part renourishment effort, what she calls Plan A, will actually benefit our beach. South Longboat Key will be receiving   the sand dredged this summer from New Pass. Presumably, she believes that some of that sand, based on past experience, will eventually drift south and end up accreting on North Lido Key. We agree. It likely will, but that could take years, if ever.

So what's that do for us in the short term, when, as LSPOA Board President Bob Lifeso so aptly put it, "Our Pavilion will very shortly be halfway to the China Sea. Well, possibly not that much, but a marine hazard nonetheless."

When pressed by Board Treasurer Elliott Himelfarb and others to suggest a Plan B, DavisShaw said we could buy some time using band-aid fixes like trucking in sand or dumping rip rap rock on the shoreline to temporarily shore up the dunes. As we reported in earlier stories, an engineer hired by Lido Shores has suggested using geo-tubes (slurry filled sand tubes) to temporarily keep the waves from eroding our dunes further. If you've been to the beach recently, you know the footing for one of our private property signs is exposed and about to topple over. And if the present one-foot encroachment every month or so continues... our LSPOA Pavilion will eventually suffer the same fate. DavisShaw seemed unwilling to provide further assurances that the City was willing to do whatever it might take to rectify this situation without further study.

Diane Desenberg points out damage to protective shoal from dredging

So, at our invitation, they came, they saw, and promised to get back to us in a month with a "refreshed" monitoring plan. Then, promised to re-evaluate the situation in 6-to 9-months. But do we have that much time?

Bob Lifeso summed up the visit saying it was important City engineers took a look at our problem first hand, and that we as a community have a say in any decisions that directly affect us. In the interim, Lifeso says Lido Shores urgently needs an emergency plan in place if we should suffer a catastrophic loss of sand in the near future.

The LSPOA Board of Directors plan to discuss various options and what to do next at its upcoming meeting at Bob Lifeso's home at 115 Morningside Drive,  Monday, May 2nd.  

The meeting begins at 5:00 pm. Any LSPOA member is invited to attend.

~ BT
bthill@icloud.com