St. Pete Catalyst reported that Dunedin committee member Nancy Schmidt told fellow commissioners last month, "Our decision had absolutely nothing to do with seagrass." The same report quoted City Manager Jennifer Bramley, sitting a few seats away, making nearly the opposite case for the same vote: "There has been a resurgence of seagrass, a resurgence of the native wildlife" since motorized watercraft stopped launching from the Causeway's south shoreline. Both women voted yes. They simply couldn't agree on why the vote needed to happen at all.
That disagreement tells you more about the past two years at the Causeway than either quote does on its own. On September 3, the Dunedin City Commission voted 5-0 to permanently ban the launching of motorized watercraft, jet skis included, from the south side of the Dunedin Causeway. If you've put a Sea-Doo in the water there on a Saturday morning, the vote reads like an ending. If you've walked, kayaked or paddleboarded that stretch anytime since 2024, it reads more like a confirmation.
A closure nobody scheduled
The launch area didn't close because Dunedin decided it should. Hurricanes Helene and Milton tore through the Causeway in 2024, damaging the roadway and eroding the shoreline badly enough that the city had to shut the area down for repairs. Pinellas County crews didn't start replenishing sand and fixing the access road until May 2026, and even then, officials expected the work to take about two months, funded through the Federal Highway Authority and the Florida Department of Transportation.
By summer 2026, most of that physical damage had been addressed. The sand came back. The road reopened. What didn't come back was the motorized launch itself, because somewhere in those two closed years, the city started paying attention to what was different with the jet skis gone, and decided it liked what it saw enough to make the absence permanent.
What two years of absence actually showed
The numbers commissioners leaned on weren't projections. They were what happened to be true during a closure nobody planned as a test. Dunedin's Parks and Recreation director told commissioners the Causeway area generated more than 3,200 calls for service to Dunedin Fire Rescue over the past five years, a mix of boating incidents, water rescues and medical emergencies. The Pinellas County Sheriff's Office documented 80 jet-ski-related incidents between January 2022 and April 2026. Fire Chief Michael Handoga reported two jet-ski deaths since 2020.
Parks and Recreation Director Tony Mulkey put the environmental side in similarly concrete terms: boat scarring in a seagrass bed can take ten years to heal, and a University of Florida study, cited by the Tampa Bay Estuary Program, mapped some of the heaviest vessel-scarring in the area just south of the Causeway, near Caladesi Island. None of that required a new survey. It was simply what got measured once the launching stopped, whether or not anyone had intended to measure it.
Two different cases, one vote
The ordinance passed its first reading on July 23 by a 4-0 vote, with Vice Mayor Robert Walker absent. By the September 3 final vote, all five commissioners, Walker included, voted yes. Walker's perspective carries a detail nobody else on the commission could offer in quite the same way: he also captains the Caladesi Island Ferry, and he told the commission the storms had physically reshaped the water off the Causeway, expanding sandbars and shoaling the exact stretch where riders used to put in. Even if the ordinance had gone the other way, the beach people remember from before 2024 doesn't sit in the water the same way anymore.
Environmental groups, including the Sierra Club, backed the ban on habitat grounds. Schmidt and others framed it around years of traffic congestion, a heavier police presence and the rental businesses that had built up around the free launch spot. The city folded both arguments into the final ordinance language, citing increased wildlife, reduced shoreline disturbance and improved pedestrian and cyclist safety. Whichever reason moved a given commissioner, the outcome landed in the same place.
What's actually still allowed
The ban applies specifically to launching or landing motorized watercraft from the south side of the Causeway. Walking, sunbathing, fishing, kayaking and paddleboarding aren't affected. Under the new ordinance, a first violation draws a warning rather than an immediate citation.
The city's own state-required business impact statement estimated that zero businesses would be directly affected, since commercial activity on that city-owned stretch was already prohibited before the ban existed. Commissioner Jeff Gow pushed staff on whether they'd actually studied the effect on nearby restaurants, shops and gas stations, and staff acknowledged they hadn't done an in-depth analysis. The one business city staff considered most exposed was High & Dry Grill, run by Glenn Steinky on the Causeway since the 1990s alongside a kayak rental operation. Steinky, who earlier in the year had described how the storm-damaged access road limited parking and foot traffic during repairs, ended up supporting the permanent launch ban when it came to a vote.
Where the jet skis go now
Before the storms, the Causeway launch was free. The city has since circulated a list of alternative public and private launch points in northern Pinellas County, priced between $6 and $20 a day, and Commissioner Sandbergen noted that other area boat ramps remain open. That's the real shift for anyone who used to load a trailer and pay nothing: the informal, no-cost version of Saturday morning is gone, even though every paid alternative still exists.
More than 1,500 people signed a Change.org petition opposing the ban before the final vote, and residents showed up to say so in person. Clearwater resident Adelle Carpenter argued the launch spot had been there for 40 years and didn't deserve to disappear over safety concerns she considered overstated. Paddleboarder Chloe Dallas pointed out the tradeoff in the paid alternatives: you gain a legal launch point, but you also leave a car unattended in an unfamiliar lot. On the other side, lifelong resident Chase Beatty described noticing wildlife at the Causeway he'd never seen there before, along with seagrass that had visibly healed from what he called the "dead patches" left by jet skis and trailers, according to Bay News 9.
For everyone else who uses the Causeway without a trailer, the practical change isn't that the place gets harder to visit. Parking is easier to find. There's less noise, less trailer traffic backing toward the water, and by the city's own account, less trash. The one thing permanently missing is the specific, free, decades-old habit of driving a jet ski straight off that sand, and it isn't coming back with the next repair project.
If you're weighing what a changing waterfront means for property near the Causeway, or you just want a local's read on how Dunedin's shoreline rules keep evolving, TheFloridaGulfCoast.com is a good place to start that conversation.
This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.
