Pinellas will renourish Pass-a-Grille Beach this summer. Expect closures.
Pinellas County plans to renourish Pass-a-Grille Beach this summer in a project set to involve about 150,000 cubic yards of sand and periodic beach closures.
Work there is set to begin June 3 after county commissioners on Tuesday approved $4.4 million in funding from tourist development taxes, which the county collects on stays at hotels and short-term rentals.
In the first phase, the county will move between 10,000 and 15,000 cubic yards of sand from the nearby Grand Canal dredging project onto the beach between Fourth Avenue and Ninth Avenue. That work is scheduled to be done by the end of August.
The second phase, which could last into October, entails 138,000 cubic yards of sand from Pass-a-Grille Inlet to renourish the beach from its southern tip at First Avenue to 22nd Avenue, where the northernmost public beach access is located. That phase hinges on approval from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which has yet to issue a permit for the work.
Beach access will be periodically closed during construction. Updates on which access points are open and which portions of the beach are being renourished will be available on the county’s website.
The Army Corps has traditionally renourished beaches in Pinellas County every few years, with the federal government footing much of the bill. But those projects have been put on hold indefinitely amid a standoff between the county and the Army Corps that began when the latter landed, about a decade ago, on a new interpretation of a policy regarding access to private property while the work is being done.
It now requires all property owners within the project area to provide perpetual public access to their property before it can do the work. (All the beaches already have public access points for beachgoers.) Many property owners have been unwilling to do so.
For much of the past decade, this fight has mostly involved the largest renourishment project in the county, Sand Key, which stretches from North Redington Beach to north of Belleair Beach. But last summer, the Army Corps determined it was also missing easements in its other project areas — Treasure Island and Long Key, which includes Pass-a-Grille — and would halt planned renourishment there, too.
Since then, the county has begun taking renourishment into its own hands. After Hurricane Idalia battered much of the Pinellas coast, including Pass-a-Grille, the county spent $30 million from tourist taxes to restore sand dunes, which are key to protecting barrier islands’ buildings and infrastructure in storms.
Though county officials have said they’re continuing to talk to the Army Corps and to put pressure on the federal government to change its policy interpretation, Pinellas is also looking harder than ever at handling full-scale renourishment on its own. Long-term spending projections shown to the county’s Tourist Development Council earlier this month included $102 million on renourishment in both 2026 and 2032. On Tuesday, county commissioners also accepted more than $10 million in state funding for renourishment and dune construction on Sand Key.
While renourishment on Pass-a-Grille is set to move ahead, the county said it’s still paused in the rest of the Treasure Island and Long Key areas, including Sunset Beach, Sunshine Beach and Upham Beach.
