Posted on November 22, 2016
By Andrew Parent, ShoreNewsToday
Dredging work in Snug Harbor, Glen Cove and South Harbor was completed by the end of October, and private dredging in boat slips there is set to finish by the end of November, according to officials.
The city project, contracted to Trident Piling Company, LLC of Longport for $797,000, was finished with little problems, according to Trident owner Joe Stewart, who is also director at Seaview Harbor Marina in Egg Harbor Township, near the Route 152 bridge into Longport.
The city awarded the contract to Trident in August to dredge a combined 4,130 cubic yards in Snug Harbor, between Eighth Street and Revere Place off Bay Avenue, and Glen Cove, between 10th and 11th streets. The work also included dredging another 4,000 cubic yards at the mouth of South Harbor, between Spruce Road and Tennessee Avenue.
Stewart said the company over-dredged by a “couple hundred” cubic yards in South Harbor, which will result in a minor change order, he said. City public information officer Doug Bergen said ACT Engineers, the firm hired by the city to handle lagoon and back bay dredging, will work with Stewart on a final cost of the change order.
The change order will be announced at a later City Council meeting, he said.
The work in Snug Harbor finished an incomplete job from 2015, in which another contractor, Wickberg Marine Contracting, managed about two-thirds of a project to dredge 14,000 cubic yards there before state environmental restrictions brought work to a halt after Dec. 31.
City officials said last year that silt dredged from Snug Harbor and dumped at the confined disposal facility under the Route 52 bridge took longer than expected to dry out, before it could be trucked away.
“It’s still pretty loose material, but we haven’t had that much rain,” Stewart said of the current project. “It dried out pretty good.”
Along with the recently complete public work, many Snug Harbor residents contracted Trident to dredge their private boat slips over the summer, bringing navigable depth to the once-heavily silted lagoon.
Stewart said his company is still dredging private slips in both Glen Cove and South Harbor. Not many residents took advantage of the private services, he said, as the company is set to dredge 16 slips in South Harbor and just a few others in Glen Cove before the month is out.
Private dredging is optional, and residents who sign up for the work have to pay for it themselves, Stewart said. State environmental restrictions will prohibit dredging from Dec. 1 to July 1.
“I’m not sure they knew about it,” he said. “A lot of them are seasonal, so they don’t live there full-time and maybe they don’t check the (local media). We tried to do the best we could.”
A number of slips were in good condition, particularly farther into South Harbor, he said.
“Most of the material was in the entrance of South Harbor,” he said.
Depending on the extent of the work, residents in Snug Harbor and Glen Cove who participated in the private portion of the job paid $5,000 to $10,000 for the work, Stewart said. The cost in South Harbor is higher than the other two, because the neighborhood is farther away from the disposal site under the Route 52 causeway, where dredge spoils are placed to dry and later trucked away, he said.
In its 2016 capital plan, the city allotted $10 million for dredging in 2016 and $5 million each in 2017 and 2018.
A $1.1 million temporary access road from Roosevelt Boulevard to Site 83, the city’s disposal site near the 34th Street bridge, was completed earlier in the fall by Command Co. Inc. of Berlin.
In July, city officials agreed to a $7.8 million contract with Command Co. to truck 150,000 cubic yards of dredging material out of the site, which holds 300,000 cubic yards of spoils.
City officials have said using the rock road to truck material directly from the site, instead of using barges to haul spoils from the site to the trucks, is a cheaper way of opening up the disposal site for future lagoon and back bay dredging projects.
Ocean City’s Bergen said by email Wednesday that crews are preparing the site for hauling, which should start within the next couple of weeks.
The city hopes to resume dredging by July 1 of next year, he said. Officials will announce project plans when it presents its capital plan for next year to City Council in early 2017.
Source: ShoreNewsToday
