Blind Pass right jetty

To the right of Captiva's jetty

We love to see good west winds bring our seashell treasures to us but we do have some problems that come along with it. With wind, the sand and shells are brought in and start to form sand bars in some of the waterways. When the waterways close, the lack of water flow depletes the bays of the nourishment they need to keep healthy. That’s what happened to our waterway many years ago… it closed so we opened it back up by dredging.

The dredging of the channel that splits Sanibel Island and Captiva Island called Blind Pass, was completed July 31, 2009. I attended a meeting last night to find out what should happen to keep the pass open for the future. The number one goal to open the pass was keep the flow and quality of the water stabilized for 5 years. Navigation was never in the plan. For those of you who have been following this blog, I’ve shown pictures of the dramatic changes of the pass since the beginning of December.

I’ve had many of you ask me what “they” are going to do about it. This is my take on what happened in the meeting. It looks like we have a permit that is expected to be approved in June 2011 and there should be a dredge available in September 2011. I’m not saying that I was told there WILL be dredging then but it could be AVAILABLE if  the City of Sanibel, CEPD, and Lee County decide to go ahead with it. Mother Nature will be the one that decides if she wants to close it completely or not. Right now the water is still flowing and the county feel that the pass is still stable.

I have a video of yesterday at high tide. Guess what…. you can only see a little tip of one of the bars. The water was flowing over top of most of the sand bars.