INDIAN ROCKS BEACH, Fla. — Pinellas County Public Works recently completed its $36 million emergency beach sand dune project, but contractors will be going back to regrade the slope on access points at homes and condos after receiving complaints about pathways being blocked.

What You Need To Know

  • Pinellas Public Works recently completed a $36 million emergency beach sand dune project

  • County officials said, though, that contractors will be going back to regrade the slope on access points at homes and condos

  • The access points will not be as low as they were before, and the contractors will not remove sand to improve views 

“They’re going to be doing some of the work on the access points to try to make them a little bit more accessible because of the scarping that has occurred,” said Pinellas coastal manager Dr. John Bishop. “It’s going to be minimal work. By and large the project is finished.”

That scarping made some areas to steep for beachgoers to get to the water easily, so the regrading is aimed at extending the slope to allow better access.

But Bishop said contractors will not be going back to scrape any sand off the top of the dunes to improve views, saying it will erode naturally.

“Once the sand is in place, we can’t spend more money to go in and now remove the project we just built,” he said. “The rain’s going to cause it to settle. The waves will cause it to erode. I hate to say it but a lot of these problems are temporary.”

Joe Wells, 69, has owned a condo at Fifty Gulfside Condominiums in Indian Rocks Beach for 33 years. He rents it out and said the access point for his mostly elderly guests has been blocked by the dunes because the incline is dangerously steep.

“They need to come in and grade this down so our guests can access the beach,” he said. “It has been like this for several months.”

Carmen Aschettino, 75, said this is the fourth season that he and his wife have rented an Indian Rocks Beach condo for three months. He said they were extremely disappointed when they arrived in January and saw the new dune system was blocking their access.

“For us not to be able to walk on the beach after paying that kind of money, or even see the beach, that’s just unconscionable,” he said. “I haven’t found a person yet who likes it. I don’t feel I’m getting as much value for my money any longer.”

Joseph Jorgensen, the founder of TRS, a company which manages about 500 vacation rental units from Indian Rocks Beach to St. Pete Beach, said he has been getting hundreds of complaints about the dunes blocking access and views.

“I’m worried these dunes are affecting my business … and will affect my business worse as we get into the season,” he said. “I’ve got people saying they’re not coming back.”

Bishop said the dunes were put in place as a storm damage protection barrier after Hurricane Idalia severely eroded the Pinellas County beaches last August. He said the dunes need to last for at least two hurricane seasons because that’s probably the soonest the next renourishment project will take place.

“The idea of having to go through several more hurricane seasons before any kind of a project can be put in place is kind of scary,” he said. “I think we’ve added a lot of protection that’ll be there, hopefully, for several years to come and will help to get some of these property owners through that gap in the projects.”

A storm on Dec. 17 washed away about half of the newly constructed dunes in many areas along the coastline. Bishop said the county does not want to undermine its new dune system any further, so they will not be doing any “cut-throughs” and contractors will not regrade the access points as low as they were before.

“Try to add access back in without totally cutting through the dune and sort of negating its purpose in the first place,” he said. “We didn’t want to create weak spots where the water can just rush right through and do all the damage anyways.”

The beach has become narrow because of a lack of regular restoration due to an ongoing battle with the Army Corps of Engineers over perpetual easements. Bishop said that’s one reason the county built the dunes 10 feet tall, which is higher than in the past.

“To provide the maximum amount of storm protection that we can in such a little area,” Bishop said. “The 10 feet, that was our starting point because that’s what the Corps deemed was necessary in their feasibility study.”

Wells said he signed the Corps perpetual easement and welcomes beach renourishment, but just wants his renters to be able to get to the beach.

“We want the sand, but they need to complete the job,” he said. “Give us our access to the beach.”

Bishop did not provide a time frame for when the access point regrading work will be complete.