February 8, 2010
Growing quickly, it threatens navigation in Matlacha Pass
By Brian Liberatore
bliberatore@news-press.com
An expanding sandbar is threatening to cut off boat traffic between Cape Coral and the Matlacha Pass, trapping hundreds of boaters.
Lee County officials say they'll launch an emergency dredge if the sand closes off traffic completely.
But they're stuck for a way keep the sandbar from returning.
The issue promises to complicate a yearslong bureaucratic struggle between Cape Coral, Lee County and a handful of environmental advocates over the future of Cape Coral's northwest canals, access to the pass and other popular waterways.
A bureaucratic process is supposed to come to a conclusion March 5, and could decide if Cape Coral reinstalls the Ceitus dam, who pays for dredging in Matlacha and even the size and draft of boats allowed in the system.
Whatever happens, nearby residents say it has to happen quickly. The 200-yard sandbar has grown 100 yards in the past year.
A 90-yard opening is all that remains.
"It's amazing in the last year how much sand is accumulating," said Richard Lauber, who owns a home overlooking the sole passage between the northwest Cape and Matlacha Pass. On Thursday a flock of seagulls rested on the sandbar, above the water's surface.
"That's Cape Coral sand," said Lauber's neighbor, Bill Leroy.
Dam falls apart
Until two years ago a dam separated 120 miles of canals in northwest Cape from the Matlacha Pass. The state forced the city's original developers to install the dam 30 years ago to separate fresh water in the canals from the estuary.
Whether from lack of maintenance or defective design, the dam fell apart about a decade ago. Canal water blasted through breaches in the mangrove forest, ripping out trees and eroding the soil.
In 2008, the city yanked out the dam over concerns it was increasing water pressure and compounding erosion to the mangroves. A handful of groups, including Lee County officials, challenged the removal, setting off a bureaucratic procedure, deemed an Environmental Management Agreement process. The process was scheduled to last a year. But the complexity of the issue has extended the process to two years.
According to the agreement, 20 of the 21 groups involved have to agree to a way to prevent the city's canal water from impacting or polluting Matlacha Pass. Proposals on the table include adding oyster habitats, which serve as pollutant filters, improving stormwater management in the Cape and installing city sewers - a plan rife with political volatility.
A solution?
Without an agreement, the city could be forced to reinstall the dam a few hundred yards north of the first dam.
But state officials are not convinced that would solve the sediment problem.
Here's why:
When water running through a small channel enters a larger body of water, it slows, dropping the sand and sediments it was carrying. The phenomenon, which forms river deltas, plagues water navigation around the world.
Water flows from the northeast of Cape Coral, entering the canal system, where it gains velocity and picks up sediment, Roland Ottolini, the director of Lee County's Natural Resources Division, explained. The water has been punching through breaches in the mangroves and running through streams and into the channel where it slows, dumping fine, white sand.
Pulling out the dam might actually slow the sediment deposits, Ottolini said, by reducing the pressure of the water blasting through the mangroves. Residents overlooking the sandbar were not convinced. They say the sand has been piling faster after the city pulled out the dam.
"What really needs to happen is we need (to create) a true three-dimensional model that could do sediment transport models to really see where your sediment sources are," Ottolini said. That kind of study, he added, would cost money - something area governments are not anxious to part with.
Officials will continue to grapple with the issue at March's EMA meeting.
Lauber fears there isn't much time.
"In another year you won't be able to get through there," Lauber said.
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