Posted on March 2, 2022
ENGLEWOOD — Finishing up beach restoration at the southern tip of Manasota Key, dredging crews will now begin restoration of the Gulf shoreline on Knight Island south of Stump Pass.
Charlotte County’s Beaches and Shores Advisory Committee is set to be updated on the dredging project 9 a.m. Thursday.
The committee meets in Room B-106 of the E. Jay Carlson Community Development Building at the Murdock Administration Center, 18500 Murdock Circle, Port Charlotte.
Since December, the Atlantic and Gulf Dredging and Marine dredging crews have pulled sand from the Stump Pass channel and have been placing it along the shoreline of Stump Pass State Park.
The channel itself is being dredged to a navigable at 5 feet deep. Also, crews will straighten the channel that naturally migrates and curves to the south.
To date, county officials reported how more than 65,000 cubic yards of sand have been pulled from the pass.
As the maintenance dredging continues, the sand will be pumped to the south, onto the northern tip of Knight Island.
The permeable 400-foot-long rock groin — a “leaky jetty” built in 2017 that extends into the gulf from the southern tip of Manasota Key — is working as designed.
The rock groin was engineered to trap some, but not all, of the sand traveling south in currents and keep it from slipping into the Stump Pass channel.
The rock groin, now covered with sand, has extended the time for maintenance dredging of Stump Pass from three-year cycles to four years or longer.
Barring any storms or other delays, the $2.2 million maintenance dredging project could be completed by the middle of this month or early in April.
To learn more about the status of Stump Pass dredging and other Charlotte County projects, visit “Project Status” at www.charlottecountyfl.gov.
