Posted on April 5, 2020
Great Lakes Dredge and Dock Co. of Illinois is set to finish beach nourishment in Pine Knoll Shores Thursday evening and begin work in a small part of Salter Path Friday.
Greg Rudolph, manager of the Carteret County Shore Protection office, said early Thursday afternoon that about 1,000 feet of work remained in western Pine Knoll Shores.
“We’ll start the Salter Path reach tomorrow, which should be completed by (Wednesday) April 8, and then off to western Emerald Isle,” Mr. Rudolph said. “Great Lakes is forecasting completion of the western Emerald Isle beach on (Tuesday) April 21, weather-and-mechanically-dependent, of course. Demobilization starts immediately after that.”
The dredging contract deadline, set for environmental reasons, is Thursday, April 30.
Mr. Rudolph added that Great Lakes plans to demobilize some of the land-based pipe it will not need for western Emerald Isle even sooner, at the Iron Steamer Pier beach access in Pine Koll Shores.
In addition, Mr. Rudolph said, “We’re beginning to turn our attention to the dune-planting phase that’s tentatively scheduled to begin the last week of April.”
The planting will last a few months, he said, and includes mechanical planting along the dune crest, followed by hand-planting elsewhere.
The only bad news, Mr. Rudolph reported Thursday, was the dredge had a lethal “take” Tuesday at about 5:30 p.m. of a critically endangered Kemp’s Ridley turtle, believed to have been a juvenile.
Under the conditions of the master biological plan for the project and the county’s permit, a certain number of lethal sea turtle takes are allowed.
The county has used trawls to check for sea turtles throughout the project. Under the biological plan and permit, the county was permitted to continue the work after the lethal take.
However, Mr. Rudolph said, Great Lakes immediately began a “deep-dive into their operations to ensure all the operating precautions were being adhered to.”
Those, he said, included checks to see if the dredge vessel’s pumps are on and the drag heads fully buried in the sand.
“The federal and state resource agencies were very responsive and professional in our discussions with them regarding this issue, which was very much appreciated,” he said.
The $28.2 million project put in 522,000 cubic yards of sand in Atlantic Beach, west of The Circle, and, by the end of work Thursday, 990,000 cubic yards in Pine Knoll Shores.
Salter Path, at the state-owned, county-operated beach access, is to get 145,000 cubic yards, and Emerald Isle is to get 345,00 cubic yards, roughly from the Land’s End clubhouse to just east of the Western Ocean Regional Access.
The total amount of sand in the project is about 2 million cubic yards along about 9.5 miles of beach.
Source: Carolina Coast Online
