OKALOOSA ISLAND — No more sand will be trucked to the construction site of a new hotel until Okaloosa County Attorney John Dowd determines how white is white enough.
“It’s sort of a gray area, if you’ll pardon the pun,” county Growth Management Director Elliot Kampert said.
The county has requested that no more sand be delivered to Air Force property on Okaloosa Island where a Holiday Inn Resort is being built until it can determine whether the sand meets its color standards.
Panama City-based GAC Contractors has hauled in about 375 truckloads and anticipates bringing in 1,800 more, said company Vice President Derwin White.
The request to halt the hauling came after complaints were lodged claiming the sand arriving from a pit west of Panama City Beach was darker than the natural crystal white sand, County Administrator Jim Curry said.
“The company has been ordered not to bring any more sand in until we give them the go-ahead,” Kampert said.
White said his company complied with the county’s request and that no cease and desist order was issued.
GAC Contractors has provided samples from both the “source pit” where its sand is mined and the construction site on Air Force property formerly known as the A-5 parcel between Waterscape condominiums and the Sheraton Four Points hotel.
Kampert said the sand samples provided have been determined to contain only miniscule amounts of shell fragments, red clay, yellow clay or sediments.
“It was almost all sand,” he said.
But because a county ordinance restricting “the use of discoloring materials on public beaches and the sedimentation of public waters by construction materials” is vague on what is “unclean sand,” Dowd has been called in.
Kampert said a soil chart has determined the sand being brought in is “white to grayish white.”
The question for Dowd is, “is it white enough?” Kampert said.
“The code does not establish a standard,” he said.
White said if the county finds that the sand GAC Contractors has been hauling does not meet its standards, his company will go to a different site to find sand or more thoroughly wash the sand coming from the present site.
He said he’s confident neither option will prove necessary.
“We don’t anticipate any problems based on the data we’ve received since we stopped hauling,” he said.
GAC Contractors is doing site work for dck worldwide LLC Construction Co.
Dck worldwide has partnered with Innisfree Development to build the Holiday Inn franchise.
Ground was broken on the $25 million project in November and work began soon after.
Rich Chism, Innisfree’s director of development, and Julian McQueen, the chief executive officer, could not be reached for comment.
Dowd also did not return phone calls.
Kampert said Dowd has not provided a time frame for offering his opinion on the sand.