This story first appeared on LuminaNews.com on Feb. 17.
Equipped with a hard hat and a neon orange vest, Ed Foxworth is used to criss-crossing the country to work on beach renourishment projects. But as a skilled laborer from Wilmington and a homeowner in Monkey Junction, he lept at the opportunity to work on Wrightsville Beach, the closest he’s worked to home in 15 years.
On Wednesday, Feb. 17, Foxworth was part of a team of employees working near the south end of Wrightsville against a backdrop of towering, heavy machinery vacuuming sand from the bottom of Masonboro Inlet and pumping it through several thousand feet of two-and-a-half foot-wide rusty red-colored pipes, which snaked through the sand dunes from the south end to an area north of the Blockade Runner Beach Resort. Once there, the sand was deposited on the beach as sludge and raked into position by bulldozers.
Wednesday marked the beginning of the Wrightsville Beach phase of this year’s renourishment cycle. Bulldozers rolled through the dunes, occasionally swiveling like tanks, while inspectors with Great Lakes Dredge and Dock, the contractor, and project officials with the Army Corps of Engineers, the contractee, circled the beach strand in trucks and Kubota RTVs.
As the dredge vacuumed, smoke occasionally drifted over the inlet and thick streams of water spurted from a string of floating hoses linked like sausages, while tugboats set anchors and buoys.
"Usually you don’t have this much equipment. But this is a pretty big job," said a project inspector with the Army Corps of Engineers who declined to give his name. "It’s a whole bunch of wenches and anchors and very powerful diesel engines."
Great Lakes had begun laying pipe on Wrightsville early the previous weekend, people close to the project said. Precise estimates vary, but the project is expected to last between four and six weeks, meaning that when spring break starts in March, visitors will be greeted by miles of red piping and hulking bulldozers. Boaters traveling the inlet will site the giant equipment, including the dredge and a boxy booster pump nearer to shore, tugboats and the sausage of floating hoses. Residents are able to see and hear the action at night.
Each section of piping on the beach contains warnings such as "Danger Keep Off" or "Danger High Pressure," spray painted in neon orange. Zach Elvington, a worker from Myrtle Beach onsite Wednesday, said he did a majority of the warning signs.
"I did the ones that were spelled correctly. I don’t know who did that one," he said, pointing to warning that read, "Danger High Pressuer."
On Wednesday, just north of the Blockade Runner, there were two mounds of sand marking where the sludge was being deposited. Nearby, a bulldozer rolled to the edge of the water line, pushing the wet sand into place. Every once in a while, something would come through the pipe that sounded like a bouncing tennis ball or a rolling grocery cart rolling through a parking lot.
Other project officials on scene with the Army Corps declined to comment, citing agency guidelines.
