Posted on April 20, 2020
EMERALD ISLE — After a delay of a couple days for refueling and waiting out stormy weather and high seas, the hopper dredge Ellis Island got to work Thursday morning on the home stretch of the $28.2 million Bogue Banks beach nourishment project.
Carteret County Shore Protection Office Manager Greg Rudolph said the vessel did a pump out Thursday morning and crews were hard at work spreading the sand in western Emerald Isle.
“We’re pumping from a pipeline that emerges (from the ocean) near the Sea Dunes subdivision,” he said in the middle of the day. “Nourishment is progressing east from this point, and we are at Emerald Isle’s Western (Ocean) Regional Access.”
Mr. Rudolph said by the middle of Thursday, there were about 6,500 linear feet of nourishment left to do in Emerald Isle, where the project will end near the clubhouse of the Land’s End development to the west.
When the project is finished, it will have involved about 9.5 miles of beach in western Atlantic Beach, Salter Path and western Emerald Isle.
There are about 260,000 cubic yards of sand left to pump to the strand and spread between the WORA and Land’s End. The area from Sea Dunes to Land’s End is getting a total of 345,00 cubic yards.
The entire project will total 1.995 million cubic yards of sand, all dredged by the Ellis Island and the Liberty Island – both owned by contractor Great Lakes Dredge and Dock Co. of Illinois – from a borrow site in the ocean off Atlantic Beach.
On April 10, Mr. Rudolph had said the completion date of the project was set for Wednesday, but he said Thursday that barring mechanical problems or bad weather, completion is now expected Monday, April 27.
The contract calls for completion by Thursday, April 30, the environmental deadline set largely because of the increasing likelihood of the dredge encountering threatened and endangered sea turtles heading in to nest on Bogue Banks beaches.
The project has had lethal takes of two sea turtles, one juvenile Kemp’s Ridley and one loggerhead. Those numbers are below the threshold that would require a work stoppage under the biological plan.
The project put in place 522,000 cubic yards of sand in Atlantic Beach, west of The Circle development district, and 990,000 cubic yards in Pine Knoll Shores. Salter Path’s beach access site received 145,00 cubic yards.
The final phase of the project will be planting of vegetation to help secure the new dunes. Some of the work will be done mechanically, some by hand. It is likely to take two to three months.
Contact Brad Rich at 252-864-1532; email Brad@thenewstimes.com; or follow on Twitter @brichccnt.
Source: carolinacoastonline
