Egmont Key, part of Tampa Bay’s cultural and natural heritage, is at risk of being lost to erosion. With nearly half of its mass lost to the Gulf of Mexico, the next big storm or high tide can compromise the integrity of the island and lose it forever.

How will losing Egmont Key affect the immediate community?

By losing a landmark of National Significance; Egmont Key is listed in the National Register of Historic Places due to a variety of military activities throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Historic structures such as batteries and old carriage roads still remain for public recreation.

Egmont protects what remains of Fort Dade, part of Florida’s historical heritage, which attracts thousands of visitors each year.

Egmont provides undisturbed habitat to a wide variety of wildlife – nearly 33,000 nesting pair of laughing gulls, royal and sandwich terns, and brown pelicans, wintering and migrating shorebirds, resident gopher tortoises and box turtles, as well as nesting habitat to federally listed loggerhead sea turtles, among others. Without Egmont all this wildlife would be displaced.
   
Outdoor recreation at Egmont Key is estimated to have a total economic impact of $6.9 million dollars to the local economy. A variety of activities involved with visiting Egmont Key – from purchasing fuel, food, beach towels, paying tolls, paying for ferry, etc. has a positive impact in our local economy.

Egmont Key serves as the operations base for the Tampa Bay Pilots whom direct commercial vessels through the bay into our ports. This is the most logistically feasible location for their operations from which if moved, could negatively impact commercial activity in the area.

In 2008, Congress funded a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) feasibility report and environmental assessment to mitigate erosion impacts and habitat degradation on Egmont Key.  This feasibility report calls for the construction of a sheet pile wall along a portion of Egmont Key’s western shore to stabilize historic structures, as well as sand nourishment on a 7-year rotation to alleviate wildlife habitat loss vital for thousands of nesting birds and sea turtles.

Egmont Key’s shoreline protection projects’ initial cost is estimated at approximately $18 million dollars, taking inflation into account.  Its feasibility report still remains in draft format as it was never funded by Congress while Egmont Key continued to wash away.

Still, hope lurks in the horizon as the USACOE Tampa Harbor Operations and Maintenance project is scheduled to dredge the navigation channel (sections Egmont 1, Egmont 2, and Mullet Key) in early fiscal year 2014.  Egmont Key will serve as a “beneficial-use site” where quality sand dredge material from this operation (up to one million cubic yards) can be dumped and placed along Egmont’s western shoreline to mitigate erosion – a more cost effective and environmentally sensitive way to deal with the excess material instead of off-shore dumping.

Nonetheless, the sheet pile wall must be in place first in order to prevent erosion from claiming any more beach front.  Funds for this navigation project are estimated to contribute approximately $10 million dollars in money savings towards the shoreline protection project’s initial costs, thus, needing only an estimated $8 million dollars to fully implement the 2008 report.

Currently, The Friends of the Tampa Bay National Wildlife Refuges (FTBNWR) is looking for partners to support the COE feasibility study. It will take an act of Congress to fund it. We, as partners, need to bring this to the attention of Congress to protect what is rightfully ours.