Posted on February 3, 2021
EMERALD ISLE — The contractor for coming the Emerald Isle beach nourishment project has been pushed back the start date again, this time to Saturday, Feb. 20.
The original start date was sometime in the last week of January, but the contractor initially delayed to Friday, Feb. 12. Greg Rudolph, manager of the Carteret County Shore Protection Office, said in an email Friday the contractor for the project, Great Lakes Dredge and Dock Co. of Illinois, “is having COVID problems.”
The two dredge vessels set to do the work, the Liberty Island and the Ellis Island, are in Florida and South Carolina, respectively, Mr. Rudolph said in the email. The smaller of the two, the Liberty Island, was set to start the project and be joined later by the Ellis Island, the larger one.
Now, Mr. Rudolph said, “The arrival of the dredges could nearly coincide with one another to help complete the project before the (Friday) April 30 environmental window closes for the sea turtle nesting season and other biological resources.”
The $36.1 million project totals 9.4 linear miles of beach in Emerald Isle, with 166,350 cubic yards of sand to be deposited in the extreme western strand off Coast Guard Road, 708,750 cubic yards to the east of that, 537,750 cubic yards in the center of town and 600,000 cubic yards in the extreme east.
The last beach project – covering western Atlantic Beach, Pine Knoll Shores and a portion of Emerald Isle with a similar volume of sand – started in mid-February 2020 and was completed right at the April 30 deadline. The same contractor and two dredge boats did that work.
Contact Brad Rich at 252-864-1532; email Brad@thenewstimes.com; or follow on Twitter @brichccnt.
