USA: Corps Awards Contracts for Post-Sandy Repairs

Corps Awards Contracts for Post-Sandy Repairs

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, New York District, has awarded two contracts to repair navigation projects in Nassau County totaling approximately $13.5 million.

The larger of the two contracts, for $ 9.7 million, was awarded to Weeks Marine of Cranford, N.J., to perform needed maintenance dredging of the Jones Inlet Federal Navigation Channel, with sand dredged being beneficially reused to restore beaches at Point Lookout, in the Town of Hempstead.

The second contract, for $3.8 million, was awarded to Village Dock, Inc., of Port Jefferson, N.Y., to carry out repairs to navigational jetties at Jones Inlet and East Rockaway Inlet.

The Jones Inlet dredging is to repair the impacts to the channel from Hurricane Sandy to restore safe navigation by restoring the channel to its authorized dimensions. It will involve the removal of approximately 650,000 cubic yards of sand, which will be beneficially reused to restore the adjacent damaged beach at Point Lookout in the Town of Hempstead and provide coastal storm risk reduction.

The dredging will restore the Jones Inlet Federal Navigation Channel to its authorized depth of 12 feet plus four additional feet of allowable overdepth.

All the dredged sand will be beneficially used by placing it directly on approximately 3,500 linear feet of shoreline west of the inlet at Point Lookout within the Town of Hempstead. The majority of the dredged sand will be used to repair the damaged shoreline in front of Point Lookout, with some sand being placed in emergency stockpiles for the Town of Hempstead to use as they see fit in the future for storm risk reduction. This beneficial use of the dredged sand will provide the Town of Hempstead improved storm risk reduction and coastline resiliency, while restoring a safe navigation channel.

The jetty repair contract will involve repairs to stone jetties at both Jones Inlet and East Rockaway Inlet that were damaged by Hurricane Sandy. The work involves locating and retrieving stones dislodged during Sandy to be used in repairs as well as adding new stones to armor the jetty where original stones are unable to be retrieved.

“The Corps of Engineers is glad to be able to carry out these important navigation channel repairs,” said New York District Commander Col. Paul Owen. “A lot of people may not realize the unseen impact Sandy had on our marine navigation channels both below the water and at associated structures, but this work is an important step toward ensuring marine traffic can continue to move safely through the region’s channels in the present as well as for years to come. The Corps is also very excited to be able to beneficially reuse this sand to improve coastal storm risk reduction at the beach at Point Lookout, which was also impacted during Sandy.”

Work on both contracts is slated to begin this fall and dredging should be completed in spring and the jetty repair jobs will be completed later in 2014.

The Jones Inlet Federal Navigation Channel was last dredged in 2008 with New York State funding and the removal of approximately 642,000 cubic yards of sand which was also placed at Point Lookout in the Town of Hempstead.

The repairs to navigation channels being carried out through these two contracts are two of several dozen similar dredging and navigation structure repair projects the Corps of Engineers is managing throughout the northeast as part of efforts to restore safe marine navigation after Hurricane Sandy. The Corps of Engineers is awarding an estimated more than $350 million in these types of contracts to offset Sandy’s impacts to these important navigation channels.

The work is being funded through appropriations in the Disaster Relief Appropriations Act of 2013 passed earlier this year, also referred to by some as the Sandy Relief Bill.

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Press Release, November 5, 2013