Posted on June 4, 2018
By Lee Hinnant, stateportpilot.com
After about two weeks of on-site preparation, crews with Weeks Marine Inc. started pumping sand onto the east end of Caswell Beach Sunday, the latest milestone in a effort to clear the shipping channel for large, transoceanic vessels.
Parts of the inner ocean bar of the Wilmington Harbor are badly shoaled and maintenance dredging scheduled for winter 2016-17 didn’t happen because of a funding shortfall. No one bid on the work when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers offered the project in the fall of 2017.
That led project managers to seek a special, one-time exemption to allow dredging during May-August, a time when most beach work is not allowed because it could interfere with nesting sea turtles, a federally threatened species (see related story in this issue).
The good news for two local communities is that high-quality sand is going back on the strand at Caswell Beach and Oak Island.
Weeks Marine will work 24 hours a day to put 1.14-million cubic yards of sand on the beach from just west of Fort Caswell to about SE 58th Street in Oak Island. The contractor will pass over the 400 block at Caswell, where sand is accreting and additional material isn’t needed.
“We’re pleased to have the sand,” said Caswell Beach town administrator Chad Hicks. “Anytime we can get sand it’s a good thing, especially since it’s coming from the harbor at no charge. It’s good for tourism and the beach and it’s good for the turtles. So we’re really excited about it.”
Sand drawn from the channel by the cutterhead suction dredge C.R. McCaskill started gushing from a three-foot-diameter pipe onto the strand about 2 p.m. Sunday. Crews erected silt fences to keep folks about 500 feet away from both sides of the discharge, since heavy equipment is used to move the pipe and groom the sand.
As work progresses, the crews will move steadily to the west. Once they reach the area around Oak Island Pier, they are expected to relocate the pipeline off parts of Caswell Beach and float more of it in the water.
When crews finish, they will leave a dry beach that is 100 to 130 feet wide.
Hicks said that despite lingering storms, the dredge crew has made rapid progress and was already near the 300 block of Caswell Beach Road by late Tuesday.
A portion of the Caswell beach access parking area will be closed to the public and used by the contractor during the length of the project. It’s not clear whether other portions of the lot or the entire lot will be restricted, but Hicks said any further closures would be intermittent.
An Oak Island town official said the contractor could be moving pipes onto the beach near Oak Island Pier as soon as this week.
Weeks is required to create sand ramps for beach-goers to cross the dredge pipeline at every pedestrian access point and at least every 400 feet. Beach-goers are asked to stay away from the high-pressure line in case it develops leaks.
Source: stateportpilot.com
