Increased erosion caused by sea walls means the structures eventually jut into the sea, preventing beachgoers from walking unimpeded along the coast, a right so fundamental to Floridians that it's written into state law.

A hardened shoreline also means sea turtles will dig their nests closer to the shore, increasing the likelihood that the nests will be washed away.

The stretch of Manasota Key where the sea wall is proposed was home to 122 sea turtle nests last summer.

"When we are having to resort to half-mile-long sea walls there is a clear failure in our coastal management policies," said Gary Appelson, head of the Gainesville-based Sea Turtle Survival League. "By the time the state deals with the issue we will be walled in in large areas of the state."

A problem that won't go away

In some places Gulf-front sea walls are impassable piles of rubble littering the beach. In others, they are massive sheets of steel driven deep into the shoreline. Most often they appear as concrete monoliths.

"Whether they know it or not, people who build seawalls commit themselves to the loss of their beach," writes Cornelia Dean, the former New York Times science editor, in her book "Against the Tide."

"Nowadays, many coastal engineers say, the evil effects of seawalls are so well established that no one builds them anymore."

Except in Florida, where coastal sea walls are at least a $200 million industry, according to the Florida Marine Contractors Association.

Mike Sole, head of the state Bureau of Beaches and Wetland Resources, said the struggle between homeowners' rights and those of the general public is one that will be waged for years to come.

"Unfortunately, Florida has developed the coast. Those buildings are there, and we are left to manage the problem as it exists," Sole said. "This is a problem that will not go away."

Florida allows sea walls under the guidance of a coastal armoring policy adopted in 1999 that attempts to balance preservation of shoreline properties with the fact that armoring the coast often threatens beach ecosystems.

"The policy is that when there is a need, and you are vulnerable, you can armor," Sole said.

But even owners of vacant land can get permission to build a sea wall.

Under an exemption pushed by coastal development interests, a gap between existing sea walls of less than 250 feet can be closed with a new wall. The justification is that the gap puts homes on either side of the wall at risk of increased erosion, especially during storms.

Property owners also are allowed to build "temporary, emergency" sea walls if they demonstrate that their property is in immediate danger.

But the term "temporary" is misleading, because the state allows nearly all of these sea walls, which are built just like permanent ones, to stay in place forever.

Coastal landowners seeking permission to build a sea wall must first convince local officials that their properties are in danger.

Sarasota County ordinances prohibit sea walls, but a series of exemptions has resulted in a 78 percent increase in permit applications in the past five years.

"We've gone way overboard on the armoring of the Gulf shoreline. It's got to stop," said County Commissioner Jon Thaxton, who has led a recent effort to limit coastal armoring.

"Are we really going to have a continuing wall from the top of our county down? It's absurd, but that's what's happening."

The commissioners hope to limit the number of sea wall applications by discouraging people from building too close to eroded shorelines.

They've asked staff to send letters to property owners planning to build near the shore, suggesting that they move their homes back from the coast. They're hoping that if the county warns people against building too close to the shore and that advice is ignored, the county will have legal standing to deny sea wall permits later on.

Thaxton thinks it's wrong to let those who knowingly build too close to the shore later claim a hardship.

"I saw it recurring on a very troublesome scale," Thaxton said. "It was not every now and then; it was the norm rather than the exception."

Coastal armoring is not as big of a concern in Charlotte County, where much of the coast is state-owned estuary.

In Manatee County, where most of the shoreline has already been hardened, residents spent nearly $10 million last year for the second beach renourishment along Anna Maria Island.

And to keep the armoring buried and to provide a beach for tourists and sea turtles alike, Manatee County's residents will have to pay those millions when the sand washes away, which it will do every three to eight years, forever.

'It's been a nightmare'

To those with property just feet from falling into the Gulf of Mexico, sea walls are a last-ditch measure. One homeowner even considers a sea wall a life-or-death measure because without one, the house could collapse in the middle of the night.

An example of the struggle to balance homeowners' rights with those of the general public has been played out for the past three decades along Blind Pass Road on Siesta Key, where tractors reduced half of the Syd Solomon house to rubble in March.

The machines merely finished what erosion began 33 years ago.

That's when artist Solomon first built the house, and Midnight Pass began inching toward it. In 1983, Solomon and nearby homeowner Pasco Carter closed Midnight Pass and promised to reopen it 1,000 yards to the south.

They never did.

Environmentalists see the Solomon house as the purest example of the folly of people building on barrier islands, spits of land that nature moves around.

Coastal property owners see the house's demise as supreme justification for sea walls, the only thing they say will keep their homes from falling into the water, too.

Susan and Lynn Fassy live in the tall, white home just north of the former Solomon house. In April, they spent $7,500 to haul in 26 truckloads of sand to protect their multimillion-dollar home.

"When I bought the house there was quite a bit of beach out there," Lynn Fassy said. "You realize there could be a hurricane, but this is regular erosion that occurs on a regular basis. You don't know that is going to happen."

Fassy, a Sarasota pain management doctor, has tried for years to get permission to build a sea wall. He's still trying.

The Casey Key homeowners got permission because their homes are not built as well as the Fassys, which has support pilings driven deep into the ground that will hold up the house even when waves wash underneath it.

Like other homeowners in his position, Fassy wonders why the county government that once permitted the building of his house won't allow him to protect it with a sea wall, now that waves wash under his home when a storm hits.

"There are rocks and hardening all over Siesta Key -- except in this one spot. Why not go ahead and let me finish it?" Fassy said. "It was supposed to be a dream home, but it's been a nightmare."

That's how it is, too, for Luba Gapchuk, one of the owners of nearly two dozen properties in the 8000 block of Manasota Key Drive who are pushing for a sea wall more than 2,575 feet long -- nearly a half-mile.

The owners of the mostly million-dollar homes are willing to spend more than $25,000 each for a sea wall that would be longer than eight football fields.

"This is terrible, terrible, terrible," Gapchuk said while walking down the eroding shoreline. "I've lost already 25 feet, maybe more. One more storm, and we'll have no structure."

Gapchuk owns three of the houses along the proposed sea wall. She and her neighbors feel they pay taxes to the county, so the county should let them protect the structures that have generated that income over the years.

But while protecting homeowners' property, a sea wall would interfere with the rights of beachgoers.

A sea wall and the erosion it would someday cause would prohibit sunbathers from walking unimpeded down the shoreline, a violation of state law.

Florida statutes guarantee everyone the right to walk up and down the shore: "Public access … means the public's right to laterally traverse the sandy beaches of this state."

But beachgoers who use the Manasota Key Public Beach, for example, won't be able to walk very far to the south if the sea wall is put in and erosional forces take over and scour the beach away.

"We would hate that," said both Conrad and Sabine Reeb, South Venice residents who walk the beach nearly every day.

"We like to be able to walk," Sabine Reeb recently said while sitting on a beach towel just north of where the sea wall would be. "The nice thing about Florida is you can walk down the beach nearly anywhere."

But that's not the case in Sarasota County, where sea walls jutting out into the ocean alrea- dy block public access to the beach in more than 100 places.

And while it's unlikely that the county will allow the Manasota Key sea wall to be built as proposed, it's a good bet that some type of wall will harden that beach. The six Casey Key homeowners originally asked to be part of a half-mile sea wall, too.

Other states

Blocking access to beaches in a state where beaches are big business is bad business.

Florida's beaches draw at least 22 million visitors each year who spend at least $8 billion, which creates about 400,000 jobs. Even Disney World contributes less to the state's economy than the beaches.

Orrin H. Pilkey, the head of the Duke University Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines, said there is no other state where it is easier to get permission to build a sea wall.

"Florida, arguably more than any state in the nation, depends on its beaches for its economic development," Pilkey said. "But it has the worst beach management program in the nation -- bar none."

Other coastal states have banned sea walls.

Maine and North Carolina are among those whose residents have decided the structures' negative effects on the environment, tourism, and public access outweigh the temporary benefits to those who own coastal property.

The South Carolina Legislature banned sea walls in the late 1980s, and now allows only sandbags in emergencies.

South Carolinians have written into law that coastal homeowners must assume the financial risk if they build on the beach.

"You people in Florida are still allowed to construct sea walls? Wow," said Nancy Vinson, a director with South Carolina Coastal Conservation League, a nonprofit watchdog group. "Here, it was hurting tourism. Our beaches were ugly rubble piles."

In the 1970s, Manatee, Pinellas and Dade counties, among others, allowed sea walls pretty much everywhere -- and their beaches soon disappeared. Now residents in those counties are committed to multimillion-dollar renourishments.

A grim picture

Scientists have documented instances where a pregnant turtle crawled up a beach and ran into a sea wall, then scraped her claws against the concrete in a hopeless quest to get farther up the beach to lay her eggs.

Loggerhead sea turtles dig more nests on Sarasota County's beaches than anywhere else on Florida's Gulf Coast.

Manasota Key has a higher density of nests -- in the thousands -- than anywhere along the Florida's Gulf Coast.

The cumulative effects of more and more sea walls on sea turtle habitat has been largely ignored by the state, which recognizes sea turtles who nest at the beach as an endangered species.

Blair Witherington, a biologist with the Florida Marine Research Institute, is involved in one of the few studies of shoreline barriers to sea turtle nesting, which include sea walls.

"To look at the future of sea turtle nesting -- and the effects of sea walls on sea turtle nesting in Florida -- (is to) paint a pretty grim picture," Witherington said.

"Sea levels will rise, buildings will continue to be threatened by the sea, and in response, armoring will continue to be put in place so sea turtle nesting beaches will continue to shrink."

Witherington said the plodding growth of coastal armoring has kept it under most people's radars, calling it "one of those blatantly obvious things nobody's ever taken a hard look at."

Appelson, of the Sea Turtle Survival League, said it's time to take that hard look at the myriad impacts of sea walls on the coast and get people on all sides of the issue talking about solutions.

"At some point our politicians need to re-evaluate our coastal policies," Appelson said. "If this is where Florida is going, we're in bad shape."

Herald-Tribune news researcher Cindy Allegretto contributed to this report.

 

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