Posted on August 27, 2017
By Prentiss Findlay, The Post and Courier
Erosion-plagued Wild Dunes will get another shot of sand in the fall aimed at stabilizing a resort beach where a history of lost shoreline has included golf course damage and ocean water swirling under condos.
Officials hope the latest effort at restoring the shore will be underway in October and completed in a little more than two months.
“We’ve needed this for a couple of years now. Hurricane Matthew exacerbated the problem,” Mayor Dick Cronin said.
Enough sand to fill more than 75,000 dump trucks will be dredged at sea and pumped ashore to repair about 1.5 miles of beach, from 53rd Avenue to Dewees Inlet.
City Council voted 7-2 Tuesday night to award an $11.8 million contract for the renourishment project, with Sandy Ferencz and Jimmy Ward voting no. Both said they don’t oppose the renourishment but had questions about how it would be financed.
Other costs associated with the project, such as engineering, permitting and post-renourishment monitoring, could drive the total tab to $14 million, Cronin said.
Ward noted the $2.9 million city share of the effort included $1.2 million possibly from a loan. He opposed the contract because the city could not guarantee the loan would not be necessary.
“Why are we borrowing money for sand?” he said.
Cronin said even if the loan is necessary, it would be paid-off using beach preservation fees collected as a 1 percent charge on rentals.
That means tourism, not property taxes, will pay the entire city share of the project, he said.
Wild Dunes property owners are providing $5.2 million for the beach renourishment. Some $3.9 million of the project cost includes $2.9 million from the Federal Emergency Management Agency that is contingent on a local match for the rest of the funds which the city hopes the state Emergency Management Division will provide.
The state Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism is contributing $3.4 million as a grant.
The funding commitments are based on estimated and not actual expenses.
“If actual expense goes down, then the project is in good shape. If actual expense is higher than anticipated, then the project will either need to be scaled back or the project will need an infusion of additional funding,” City Manager Linda Tucker said in a letter to Wild Dunes property owners.
Ferencz said she felt uncomfortable with the bid award for renourishment because of the uncertainty about the project costs and financing.
“It’s just a confusing set of numbers. I wasn’t totally convinced that I understood the numbers,” she said.
The city’s last major renourishment project was in 2008 when 900,000 cubic yards of sand was put on the beach. Some 1.4 million cubic yards of sand will be dredged and pumped onto shore for the new project.
Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Co. was awarded the contract. One other firm submitted a bid for the work that was slightly higher.
Source: The Post and Courier
