THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, October 11, 1996 TAG: 9610110490
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY PAUL CLANCY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: 179 lines
Heavy machines roared to life at the Oceanfront Thursday morning, digging a deep trench beside the Boardwalk and laying heavy black plastic drainage pipes big enough to handle a small flood.
The front-end loaders and excavators will repeat the racket this morning, but pause as the city officially breaks ground on one of the largest public works projects in its history.
Included in the elaborate improvements are construction of a new Boardwalk and seawall, and the raising and widening of the beach.
It will cost $103 million just for starters. Millions of cubic yards of sand will be dredged from the bottom of the Hampton Roads channel and poured onto the beach. And then, as the sand erodes back to sea, it will be dredged and poured again.
The project will change the face of the city's Oceanfront, pitting steel, concrete and sand against the forces of nature.
The Virginia Beach Erosion and Hurricane Protection Project, as it's called, is not designed to withstand a direct hit from a major hurricane, its designers say, but to soften the blow to the city's Oceanfront and tourism industry.
A wider, higher beach will stand up to smaller storms and take the punch out of larger ones before giving way. ``The sand is intended to be sacrificial,'' said James R. Creighton, project manager for the Army Corps of Engineers. ``But what would you rather lose - sand or hotel and condominium structures?''
The Corps, under a program favored by Congress but disliked by the Clinton administration, is providing 65 percent of the money for the project, the rest flowing from tourism bonds backed by the city. Virginia Beach's cost: $36 million.
Clinton, who originally included no national beach replenishment funds in the 1997 budget, relented and on Sept. 30 signed the $8 billion appropriation that provides the first installment.
Today at 10 a.m., after more than 20 years of study, design and redesign, the city and the Corps will hold a ground-breaking ceremony at 7th Street and the Oceanfront.
But the project is already under way. Workers from S.B. Ballard of Norfolk, the contractor, have been burying 40-inch pipe in front of the existing Boardwalk to prepare for a new pumping system that will carry storm water out to sea.
Because of the city's insistence that no work be carried out during the tourist season, the contract calls for completion of the first phase - from Rudee Inlet to 8th Street - by April 28.
``That's the only thing the city didn't give me: a lot of time,'' said company president Stephen Ballard.
The entire project should take from three to four years to complete, depending on the vagaries of weather and federal funding.
Highlights of the plan include:
A new protective seawall from Rudee Inlet to 58th Street. The seawall will consist of steel plates driven 27 feet deep and a concrete cap rising from the beach to the edge of the Boardwalk.
A new, wider and stronger Boardwalk from Rudee Inlet to 40th Street - two blocks beyond the present one. The Boardwalk will be a uniform 28 feet wide - about 10 to 12 feet wider than at present - and straight as a plumb line.
A higher, wider beach where needed from Rudee Inlet to 89th Street.
A larger dune system, with more protective vegetation, from 58th to 89th streets. The dunes will have 8-foot-wide wooden pedestrian crossovers.
Another major element includes two new stormwater pump stations at 16th and 42nd streets. Instead of flowing from old, ugly pipes across the beach, the water, minus strained trash, will be pumped 1,200 feet offshore. An existing pump station at 79th Street will get new pumps to carry storm water offshore and another new pump station will be placed at 65th Street in the median between Atlantic Avenue and the service road.
The new and expanded stations are designed to keep storm water off the beach and move it faster to reduce flooding.
Not only has the city gotten 65 percent federal help for the immediate project, with final completion around the year 2000, but Uncle Sam will pay two-thirds of the cost of sand replenishment as the beach erodes for the next 50 years.
This is a huge ongoing commitment, even costlier than the project. The cost to replace sand along the Oceanfront about every three years is estimated at $280 million.
``It is the biggest public works project in the history of the city, if you don't count Lake Gaston,'' said Carl A. Thoren, the city's beach management engineer. The Lake Gaston water pipeline will eventually cost $150 million.
The rest of the timetable is the subject of intense negotiations between the city and the Corps, but tentative plans call for construction to begin next October on northern portions of the seawall and ``enhancement'' of dunes from 58th to 89th streets.
Seawalls and beach renourishment have been under attack for decades because storms inevitably take away whatever humans construct. With rising seas and moving shorelines, critics say the government - especially the federal government - has no business throwing money at the advancing sea.
But cities that have built big tourism bases at water's edge have successfully argued that the cost is worth it.
Ocean City, Md., which put up a seawall and raised dunes, claims the $62 million it spent five years ago was paid back when damage from a single storm - which could have cost an estimated $93 million - was averted.
The Virginia Beach project is designed to protect what is now more than $500 million in property values along the Oceanfront and the same amount in yearly expenditures by tourists. The tourist business in turn generates 11,000 jobs, an Old Dominion University study concluded.
It also will protect $60 million the city already has invested in improvements to Atlantic Avenue and most of the side streets along the resort strip.
``This will take the Oceanfront up to another level,'' said Robert Hudome, resort manager for the city's Visitor and Convention Development Department. ``You have to reinvest in your product and our product is tourism.''
What tourists - and residents - will notice is a wider, elevated beach, extending about 280 feet (or the length of a football field) to the shoreline at low tide. That is comparable to the currently wider beaches at the north and south ends.
But the showpiece will be the Boardwalk itself.
The Corps of Engineers originally proposed a seawall that would rise in some places more than 5 feet above the boardwalk, cutting off the view from first-floor restaurants and hotel rooms, not to mention children and many adults.
The city objected and got what it considers a much better plan: a raised, widened Boardwalk the same height as the seawall. Furthermore, the face the seawall turns to the ocean will be decorated with dolphins, sea turtles and schools of fish.
The Boardwalk will have rails similar to the ones now in place, but instead of concrete posts, it will employ fluted, antiqued posts resembling those supporting the present street signs.
The separate bike path, which now merges with the Boardwalk at 12th Street, will continue the length of the Boardwalk and wrap around Rudee Inlet, running under the Pacific Avenue bridge and all the way around to Mediterranean Avenue. It will tie together the beachfront with the homes, restaurants and fishing docks in the inlet.
``I like it,'' Michael Standing, owner of Fogg's Seaside Grill at 4th Street, said Thursday morning as heavy equipment passed along the Boardwalk.
``It's going to move a lot of people'' to the inlet and back, he said. Because there will be more space between restaurants and hotels and the Boardwalk, establishments like his will be able to have patios out front instead of to the side. ``It'll be a lot more people-friendly.''
Robert Herman, owner of the Lighthouse Restaurant, which overlooks the inlet, added, ``We've been in the middle of nowhere for many years and finally we're going to get exposed to a lot more people.''
The Boardwalk will not just stop as it does now but end in a wide pavilion overlooking Rudee Inlet.
The present Boardwalk will be broken up with jackhammers and covered over with a new pathway that is considerably wider and smoother. ``You could land a 747 on this thing,'' said John E. Kennedy, the Corps of Engineers architect who designed the project.
At the moment, noise and disruption is at a minimum, even though workers have been on the job well after dark.
``Didn't bother me at all. In fact, it was kind of interesting watching them last night,'' Susan Ereio of Warwich, R.I., said Thursday leaning over her second-floor balcony at the Clarion Resort.
But in a few weeks, huge machines will begin vibrating the steel sheets into place, jackhammers will begin demolishing the Boardwalk and concrete mixers will begin pouring concrete.
The contractor has agreed not to turn on noisy machinery until 8 a.m. and not to begin using jackhammers or wrecking balls until 11 a.m. Construction will take place six days a week, seven if make-up days are needed.
``There's going to be some pain and suffering during this construction,'' said Beach Engineer Thoren. ``I wouldn't be telling the truth if I said you wouldn't notice it.''
The seawall may buy the city insurance against heavy damage for several decades, but Creighton, the Corps of Engineers project manager, says that 50 years from now: ``It may take heroic efforts to save the beachfront. At some point you may decide it's not worth the effort. Right now, we say it is.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
DAVID B. HOLLINGSWORTH/The Virginian-Pilot
Work began Thursday morning on phase one of the Virginia Beach
Erosion and Hurricane Protection Project. Today at 10 a.m., the city
will hold an official ground-breaking ceremony at 7th Street and the
Oceanfront.
Graphic
VIRGINIA BEACH EROSION AND HURRICAN PROTECTION PROJECT
[For complete graphic, please see microfilm]
Photo
DAVID B. HOLLINGSWORTH/The Virginian-Pilot
In one phase of the project, workers began laying pipe Thursday in
front of the existing Boardwalk to prepare for a new pumping system
that will carry storm water out to sea.
KEYWORDS: VIRGINIA BEACH EROSION by CNB