Project to Finish by Early Spring

Monday, December 12, 2005
By RYAN DEZEMBER
Staff Reporter

Efforts to reclaim storm-blown sand in Gulf Shores and to replace portions of a $25 million manmade beach there and in neighboring Orange Beach will continue through the holidays and likely conclude by March.

That means the beaches are expected to be cleared of equipment and ready for spring break with one exception: a mile-long stretch along the far end of West Beach in Gulf Shores that has yet to be bolstered at all after summer storm delays and now an equipment problem.

During a weekend of choppy surf last month a booster pump, a barge-mounted machine that pushes dredged sand through an underwater pipeline, had its anchor uprooted and was flooded, Gulf Shores Public Works Director Chuck Hamilton said last week. New equipment must replace the damaged pump and completion of that stretch, which has yet to receive any new sand, will be set back until sometime in March.

The good news, Hamilton said, is that by then most of the renourishment sand that was lost in last summer's storms will have been replaced along other stretches.

"They're basically finished with repumping the sand that was taken (by Hurricane) Katrina from the state park to the Pink Pony Pub," Hamilton said.

City officials have said post-storm surveys indicate that about 1.1 million of the 6 million cubic yards of sand that was pumped ashore as part of the 16-mile, $25 million beach renourishment project begun 10 months ago was lost. Cost of the repairs was calculated last month at about $6.7 million, but the Federal Emergency Management Agency and its state counterpart will pay 85 percent of that with both cities and the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, which partnered in the project, divvying up the rest.

The main public beach at the base of Alabama 59 in Gulf Shores was finished in October in advance of the National Shrimp Festival by collecting drifts from Alabama 182, sifting the sand and then trucking it surfside.

After the replacement sand is pumped west to the Pink Pony Pub, which sits at the eastern edge of the public beach, efforts will concentrate on the section between West Second Street to West 10th Street, where sand removed from streets and piled up on the beach will be sifted and packed into dunes, Hamilton said. That section should be complete by Christmas, he said.

The city's reclamation of sand from private property, mostly on the north side of the beach highway, will take place concurrently, he said.

Next, the sand will be trucked to the stretch from West 10th Street to beyond Little Lagoon Pass, he said. Hamilton said this portion is expected to be finished before March.

All pipes and equipment are expected to be off Gulf Shores beaches by late March or early April, Hamilton said.

The dredge equipment is expected to be floated to water off Orange Beach's shore around Christmas where it will begin pumping sand from the city's western border to the Romar Beach area, said Phillip West, the city's Coastal Resources Manager, who is overseeing the beach project there.

"Right before the New Year, they'll flip around and start about a mile west of (Perdido) Pass and move west," he said.

Once the crews reach Romar Beach from the east -- likely sometime in February -- the dredge equipment will be moved to a point off Perdido Key to begin bolstering beaches there, West said.

Also, during the winter the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will clear the navigation channel in Perdido Pass and put about 350,000 cubic yards of sand dredged up in that project on beaches west of the inlet, West said. In effect, he said, the city will be getting between $1.5 million and $2 million worth of sand pumped onto local beaches at no cost to the municipal government.

Besides looking good in time for tourist season by getting large pipelines and bulldozers off the sandy vistas, West said a spring completion date will allow sea oats that will be planted beginning in February to take firmer root and form a stronger anchor along dunes in advance of next year's hurricane season, which begins June 1.

"I don't think you can really overstate the importance of a healthy beach," West said. "It's just amazingly resilient."

When Tropical Storm Isidore struck badly eroded beaches in 2002, for example, the storm caused between $2.5 million and $3 million in property damage in Orange Beach, West said. But when hurricanes Dennis, Katrina and Rita as well as two tropical storms churned up the Gulf last summer, after the beach had been bolstered, there was almost no structural damage beyond that to boardwalks and surfside pools, he said.