Elevating Sanibel Causeway could have mitigated storm damage, preserved fishery

A few days ago, I took my second trip over to Sanibel since Hurricane Ian trashed the island nearly two years ago. As my wife and I crossed the causeway my mind wandered back to a point in time about 64 years ago. My thoughts reached back to the time when we who lived on Sanibel and Captiva islands were being threatened by the folly of the pending construction of the Sanibel Causeway.

Plans for its construction was being shoved down our throats by the Lee County Board of County Commissioners.

What’s happening to Captiva Island these days is sort of reminiscent. When the necessary permits to build a bridge to the islands were under consideration I was assigned to assist the late Art Marshall, who was leader of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s (USFWS) River Basins office in Vero Beach. He was charged with the responsibility of evaluating the potential threats of what a bridge-causeway system, as Lee County designed, could ultimately have on the ecosystems that were being sustained naturally in San Carlos Bay and Pine Island Sound. Included was an assessment of what negative impacts could occur because of inclusion/placement of the spoil islands. By law the USFWS had to rule on the appropriateness of the county’s permit application.

We conducted a brief but comprehensive biological ascertainment of the issues. At this time, the water bodies to be impacted supported recreational and commercial fisheries — including oysters and a small commercial bay scallop industry. In Marshall’s report he identified expected damage to those resources and noted incidental changes to salinities and alterations to tidal flow would occur because of the intrusion of the spoil islands. Therefore, and with no negative opinion presented that would suggest prohibition of a bridge, the USFWS recommended that the roadway of the Sanibel Causeway be constructed completely elevated above the water, supported by pilings — without any large scale, estuarine habitat damaging dredge and fill operations required.

The Florida Game and Fresh Water Fish Commission and the Florida State Board of Conservation — both now combined as the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, concurred with Art Marshall’s assessment.

At the permit approval meeting in Jacksonville with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the agency that would issue the construction permit, Art Marshall presented his recommendations. The Lee County representatives and their engineers who were present cried poor mouth at his suggestion that the bridge be totally elevated high above the water. They insisted the county could not afford to build that kind of roadway and requested that that costly design change suggestion be dropped.

The Corps acquiesced and the permit was issued.

Looking at the situation now, we should consider what huge sums of money must have already been expended to refurbish the causeway over these past 22 months. And, more has to be spent to complete rehabilitation of the spoil islands for public recreational use. Wouldn’t it have been more cost effective and make more sense to just replace the spoil island roadways with elevated bridge sections?

In the future, there will be other major hurricanes that will damage the Sanibel Causeway, and their winds and storm surges will leave much more destruction than Ian’s kiss did. We must not hide our heads in the sand, like some county commissioners tend to do, and consider that a far worse hurricane than Ian will impact the Sanibel Causeway down the road and that is only a matter of time. How will those who are sitting on the Lee County Commission when the Sanibel Causeway is even more severely damaged, than in 2022, act? Will they have woken enough by then to rebuild the causeway more substantially with its traveled way sufficiently above mean sea level? It will be longer lived, and far less costly to repair, if they use Arthur Marshall’s construction logic the next time around.

Incidentally, the scallops have never substantially returned to the causeway-damaged waters of Pine Island Sound and any nearby oysters are neither fit, nor safe, to eat.

Charles LeBuff of south Fort Myers started a federal career with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) at its Red Tide Field Investigation Laboratory in Naples in 1956. In 1958 Charles transferred to Sanibel Island after accepting the number two position on what then was known as the Sanibel National Wildlife Refuge. He and his wife, Jean, were residents of Sanibel Island for 47 years. During his time on that barrier island, he completed a 32-year career as a wildlife technician with the FWS, retiring in 1990. In 1961, Charles was elected president of the Sanibel-Captiva Audubon Society and in 1967 he was a founding board member of the Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation. In 1968, as an avocation, he formed a loggerhead sea turtle conservation organization known as Caretta Research, Inc., and headed that group until 1992. Today’s successful sea turtle conservation efforts on the beaches of Southwest Florida evolved from Charles LeBuff’s pioneering work.

This article originally appeared on Fort Myers News-Press: Elevating Sanibel Causeway could have mitigated storm damage, preserved fishery