It's down to just three Dauphin Island west end homeowners. These last three holdouts are the only remaining obstacles to work beginning on the berm.
These remaining three property owners are holding up construction of a new $4 million wall of sand, a berm, which would run approximately 4 miles along the Dauphin Island beach front, protecting over 500 west end Dauphin Island vacation homes. The federally funded berm is intended to reduce Gulf flooding on Dauphin Island's west-end beach.
Why are these property owners holding up progress? According to an article in the Mobile Register (see link below), one of them is still upset that a previous berm washed away by Isidore in 2002 left "several feet" of sand under his house which his insurance company declined to remove.
Island resident Jim Hartman said he's one of the holdouts. He said he's refused to sign an entry agreement because Isidore's storm surge spread the sand of the last berm across the island, leaving sand several feet deep under his house and over his lot. His insurance company refused to pay to remove the sand because the incident "was not nature's work but was man-made," Hartman said.
Let's hope Mr. Hartman can be persuaded to adopt a more neighborly attitude and decides to grant access so that he and everyone else on Dauphin Island's west end beaches can be a little better protected.
After all, these are vacation homes. They're an expensive luxury. There's a badge of honor for having to pay a guy with a bobcat $1000 to remove some sand the last storm brought in.