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Staff photo by Joshua Curry
Great Lakes Dredge and Dock’s tug boat moves piping into postion for the crane to hoist onto Masonboro Island for the first stage of the federal operations and maintenance beach nourishment project on Tuesday, Jan.13. |
Rick Catlin, chairman of the Port, Waterway and Beach Commission wishes he might have done more to affect the outcome of the county’s beach nourishment program.
"I’m disappointed on a variety of levels," Catlin said, Friday, Jan. 8, after learning that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (ACOE) had decided to nourish Masonboro Island beaches ahead of Wrightsville’s.
"I guess I’ll reserve any further comments until I see whether Wrightsville Beach gets the quality and quantity of sand it has paid for."
The Port, Waterway and Beach Commission voted last year to nourish Wrightsville Beach ahead of Masonboro Island because the resort town’s last renourishment in 2006 was incomplete due to a diminished quality of appropriate material.
When he learned from Robert Keistler, project manager for the ACOE, at the eleventh hour that the request had been denied, Catlin said, "It’s just a symptom of some federal partnership difficulties that we’re having."
New Hanover County, Catlin said, had a history of being a good partner with the ACOE.
"We fought from keeping the local district from being relocated. We go up to Washington and we fight to keep our projects funded, here locally; and then we fight at the state and county level to come up with the funds to make the projects work."
In this one instance, Catlin said he felt his commission was justified in asking for the consideration because the county had authorized the use of room occupancy tax revenues to offset the federal government’s shortfall for the Masonboro Island sand by-pass, one portion of the two-stage renourishment project.
Catlin learned of the project specifications outlining the sequence of operations at a Dec. 22 pre-construction meeting with the ACOE and Wrightsville Beach Public Works Director Mike Vukelich.
"I was caught off-guard. It had been my understanding that the Corps was going to leave that up to the contractor. Had I known prior to the eleventh hour that that was the situation," Catlin said, "then there might have been some more people that I could have talked to up the ladder … maybe more productive conversations with the Corps."
