Pass debate gains steam
By Ken Garner Navarre Press
Determining the feasibility of Navarre Pass won’t be simple.
“For anything you bring up, we could bring something up,” Chuck Pohlmann said after local environmentalist Carolyn Kolb referred to research opposing alterations to barrier islands.
The Navarre Pohlmann Pass Committee – named after Chuck’s father Charles Pohlmann – is a political action committee whose current goal is garnering support for a new Navarre Pass feasibility study. Pohlmann and Treasurer Paul Lombardo both have argued that conditions have changed dramatically since the research to which Kolb referred was completed.
“If the study comes back and shows the threats outweigh the benefits, we’ll pack our tents and go home,” Lombardo said at the committee’s presentation Monday at Navarre Conference Center.
Kolb isn’t the only area resident suggesting reopening the 15-footdeep, 150-foot-wide pass isn’t practical.
“I don’t think the reality of the economics falls into the area of feasibility,” Jim Sheffer, a former Santa Rosa Island Authority general manager, warned Saturday.
Riley Hoggard, a National Park Service biologist and amateur environmentalist, said reopening the pass would interrupt the natural east-west drift of sand that replenishes the island. Installing a system of jetties and breakwaters could guide sand around the mouth of the pass and regular dredging will keep the pass clean, Hoggard said. But, he said dredging and keeping the jetties and breakwaters in working order will be prohibitively expensive.
“Every engineered solution is destined to fail,” he said.
Hoggard and Sheffer were guest speakers at Saturday’s meeting of the League of Women Voters of the Pensacola Bay Area. Hoggard stressed that his comments were his opinion and did not represent National Park Service positions. He added that some pass supporters are driven by more than civic interest.
“The pass would be good for (Navarre’s) economy, no doubt about it, but a few people would benefit financially more than others,” he said. “Some ugly people already are getting involved in this thing; they don’t seem to be willing to look at the other side of things.”
Navarre Pohlmann Pass Committee member and Navarre businessman Phil Babiak attended the League of Women Voters meeting.
“The (pass) committee has set forth on an endeavor to determine the feasibility – if there’s interest, what obstacles there might be, what benefit there might be,” he told league members. “They’re concerned citizens just like you are. Their interests and their motivations are just as genuine as everybody’s in this room. I’d encourage you to take the time to consider our position.”
President Carolann Holmes thanked Babiak for attending but explained the league took a position to protect barrier islands several years ago.
Gulf Coast Keepers President Ted Kirschenfeld earlier said his group opposes reopening the pass and “we’ll certainly be as vocal as we need to be,” including possible legal action.
Kirschenfeld said Gulf Coast Keepers is interested in protecting the unique ecosystem in Santa Rosa Sound. He said Santa Rosa Sound has salinity of about 17-18 parts per thousand and the Gulf of Mexico has roughly 35 parts per thousand. If the saltier Gulf water mixed with the sound water“wholesale change of species would be associated with that,” he said.
Hoggard agreed. “Santa Rosa Sound has developed a brackish ecosystem, not saline but not fresh, either,” he said. “(Opening a pass) is going to kill a great number of those organisms that can’t adapt. It would be a shift to a more saline ecosystem.”
Hoggard said the barrier island protects sea grass beds that are critical to as many as 90 percent of the fish species in the Gulf of Mexico.
“If the fish don’t survive, what will that do to our tourist industry?” he asked.
Lombardo didn’t pretend to have easy answers.
“I don’t think funding is going to be our biggest obstacle,” Lombardo said. “I think overcoming the environmental issues will be our greatest challenge.”
Santa Rosa County commissioners Bob Cole and Tom Stewart attended Monday’s Navarre Pass presentation. During his presentation, Lombardo emphasized the need for the county commission to request a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ feasibility study and to help the committee coordinate with the U.S. Air Force.The commissioners encouraged the committee to keep spreading its message and pursuing a feasibility study.
“I see validity in putting in this request,” Cole said.“I won’t be willing to commit one dime of tax money to this, but I don’t have any problem with asking the corps to look into it.”
Stewart had similar comments.
“Y’all are on the right track,” he said. “I don’t think you’ll have a problem with the county commission, what you’ve got to do is answer a lot of those questions (from Lombardo’s presentation) and embrace the opposition, get them to understand what you’re trying to do.”
For more information about the pass, go to www.navarrepass.com
