Hurricane Helene creates experiment with reopening of Sarasota County’s Midnight Pass
Proponents of the long-debated reopening of Midnight Pass cheered Hurricane Helene’s abrupt restoration of a natural flow of water from Sarasota Bay to the Gulf of Mexico between Siesta and Casey keys.
“It’s wonderful,” said Mike Evanoff, the president of the Midnight Pass Society II, a group that formed in 2021 with a goal of reopening the pass, which was closed in 1983 by two south Siesta Key residents who sought to protect their homes from beach erosion.
“I’ve gotten about 200 text messages on this, everyone is so excited, they’re happy,” added Evanoff, who visited the beach after surveying damage at a house he owns on Blind Pass Road, just north of Palmer Point Beach Park, which is where the reopened Midnight Pass now flows.
“The 20-foot dune that was there was completely gone,” Evanoff said. “All the trees are gone – all the trees around my house are gone.”
“There’s a huge beach down there right now. It’s flat and really nice.”
Sarasota County Commissioner Mark Smith – who was dealing with flooding at Smith Architects, P.A. on Siesta Key, learned the news from Mark Tush, one of the owners of CB’s Saltwater Outfitters, who also visited the newly opened pass.
Smith said he wasn’t surprised that the Helene reopened Midnight Pass.
“I’m just wondering why it took so long,” he added.
County Commissioner Joe Neunder said he found out about it from a couple of his buddies, as well as social media posts.
Overnight Hurricane Helene restored a natural flow of water from Sarasota Bay to the Gulf of Mexico between Siesta and Casey Key.
Neunder also contacted David Tomasko, executive director of the Sarasota Bay Estuary Program, who both visited the pass Friday and estimated that about 36 million gallons of water could flow through the newly reopened pass a day.
Tomasko based that estimate on a simplified version of the same way the U.S. Geological Survey would estimate flow.
He asked a bystander to walk across the new channel, which is roughly 20 feet across and averages out at three-feet deep.
He measured how long it took debris to span the 20-foot long channel and it took about 20 seconds – which, when the estimated size of the channel is factored in, means about 60 cubic feet of water is flowing through the pass every second.
Mathematically that projects to the 36 million gallons per day – an amount that can vary based on tide and other factors.
Helene creates experiment for Midnight Pass
“It’s got the capacity to flow at a pretty substantial rate right now,” Tomasko said.
“I think it’s a little bit of a natural experiment,” Tomasko said. “How long will it stay open?
“It’s really like an experiment: how long it stays open can help us make the case of whether or not a wild pass can stay open over time,” he added.
Glenn Compton, chairman of Manasota-88, a local environmental advocacy group, said he doesn’t think the pass opened by Helene will remain viable for long.
“I don’t think anybody should get too excited about having Midnight Pass open. It’s most likely going to close up in a very short time,” Compton said. “Looking at the videos and seeing what’s happened there, it doesn’t appear that a tidal exchange has happened; it looks like a small hole has blown open and that hole will close in a short period of time.”
How big was Midnight Pass before it closed?
In October 1921 – before hurricanes were named – a hurricane opened what was then dubbed Musketeers Pass between Siesta and Casey keys. It was renamed Midnight Pass in 1924.
By 1955 Midnight Pass was more than 500 feet wide with a maximum depth of 13 feet.
The pass became shallower both because of the impacts of Hurricane Donna in 1960 and Hurricane Agnes in 1972 and the dredging of the Intracoastal Waterway in 1963-64 that changed circulation in the bay.
In 1983, contractors working for Siesta Key homeowners Syd Solomon and Pasco Carter Jr. filled in the pass because erosion threatened their homes.
Subsequent attempts to dredge a new pass failed and after the Florida Department of Environmental Protection denied the county’s application to re-open the pass and the county withdrew its application.
A new push to reopen the pass
In 2023, Midnight Pass Society II and other proponents of reopening Midnight Pass pointed to the degradation of water quality in Little Sarasota Bay after the pass was closed as a reason to seek its reopening.
The nearest opportunity for water to flush out of Sarasota Bay to the Gulf of Mexico are at Big Pass – between Siesta and Lido keys – and the Venice Jetties – a hardened inlet between Casey Key and the island of Venice.
The Midnight Pass Society II proposed that a new pass be made and that a north channel and a south channel flow into it, which they believe would help keep the pass open. They feel that restoring the pass would improve the water quality of Little Sarasota Bay.
The state Legislature approved $1 million to design and permit a project that would reopen the pass but Gov. Ron DeSantis vetoed that funding.
Later that year, the County Commission authorized a fresh study on the feasibility of reopening Midnight Pass, in part to try to gain more favor with state and federal regulators on a project that is projected to cost from $25 million to $40 million for construction and environmental mitigation – not counting design and permitting.
Earlier this month county commissioners expressed an intent to lobby the Legislature to enable that reopening to occur.
Compton, leery of what that would mean to the future of the estuary that has developed in the decades since the pass closed, also noted that decades of development has impacted the quality of water that runs from Sarasota into the bay.
“If it does close up it certainly does indicate that there is no tidal exchange between the Bay and the Gulf,” Compton said.
“The history of Midnight Pass has been that tidal exchange has diminished to the point where it has disappeared – that’s why it’s closed,” he added. “We’ll never have a 1970s Midnight Pass again because we’ll never have a1970s watershed again.”
Watching and waiting for mother nature
Tomasko noted that a recreated tidal connection between the Gulf and Sarasota Bay is something that many people thought would happen.
While Hurricane Idalia did not produce that connection, the force associated with Helene’s storm surge – at least two feet higher than Idalia’s − increased exponentially.
“I know that Helene put water all the way across Siesta Key, Anna Maria Island, Longboat Key,” Tomasko said. “With Helene water was all the way across all of our barrier islands.”
Now that the hurricane created the experiment, the next step, he said, is to see if it will remain open.
Neunder, who counts both south Siesta Key and Casey Key in his district, is taking a wait-and-see approach.
“It is open, water is moving; we don’t know how long it will last,” Neunder said. “Letting Mother Nature take its course is the best shot.”
This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Hurricane Helene reopens Midnight Pass between Siesta and Casey keys
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