Egmont Key restoration effort grows after Hurricane Helene devastation

Leaders fight to save historic Egmont Key

Environmental advocates and leaders in the Bay Area are pushing to restore and preserve Egmont Key, one of the region's precious landmarks. FOX 13's Kylie Jones reports.

EGMONT KEY, Fla. - Environmental advocates and leaders in the Bay Area are pushing to restore and preserve Egmont Key, one of the region's precious landmarks.

The Egmont Key Alliance led its second State of the Island forum to assess remaining damage from Hurricane Helene.

The backstory:

Helene left extensive damage across Egmont Key in 2024.

After the storm, the harbor pilot houses, docks and other historical landmarks were destroyed. Wildlife on the island was also left to live among the wasteland of debris.

"One day, we brought over 20,000 pounds of trash off the island," Tara Hubbard, with the Egmont Key Alliance said. "There's refrigerators, chairs, mattresses."

READ: Hurricanes ravage Egmont Key, force harbor pilots to relocate

The island is still littered with debris and trash as advocates have spent the last year and a half working to clean up the island.

What they're saying:

"Erosion has been exacerbated by the hurricanes and big low pressures, and storms since then," Hubbard said.

The Bay Area's harbor pilots were forced to move off the island and to a temporary space at the Tierra Verde High and Dry Marina.

"The pilots aren't operating out of there," Hubbard said. "There is no active wildlife manager out there. There's no active state park manager out there, because the residences were destroyed. So, right now, our wildlife doesn't have that protection that we would like to see."

Environmental advocates ventured out to Egmont Key on Hubbard's ferry Friday afternoon to discuss future efforts to restore and preserve the island.

"It's going to be kind of overgrown, and the buildings are going to be damaged, the Coast Guard building," Richard Sanchez, with the Egmont Key Alliance said.

Dig deeper:

Sanchez says the history of Egmont Key dates back to the 1500s, when Spanish explorers came into the area. He says preservation of the island is crucial to preserving hundreds of years of history.

One of the challenges with the island is that it's managed by a number of different agencies, including U.S. Fish and Wildlife, the U.S. Coast Guard, the Florida Park Service and Bay Area harbor pilots.

"So, if that could be under one jurisdiction, so things like the lighthouse, the sea turtles, the tourism, the opportunity to bring our residents here and our tourists to the island, if one organization could manage that, we could really capitalize on that and protect it," Christie Bruner with the St. Pete Area Chamber of Commerce said.

The island also not only needs to be cleaned up, but replenished.

"The Army Corps of Engineers consistently dredged [the] Tampa Bay Channel, and that material has to go somewhere," Hubbard said. "Decades ago, they used to take it offshore, but now through the Egmont Key Alliance efforts, we've been working with them to actually place it on the west beach to restore the island."

What's next:

Advocates and leaders hope to work with lawmakers to streamline ownership and management of the island, and to develop measures to help preserve it.

They would also like to see the historic lighthouse restored.