Lt. Gen. Todd Semonite, USACE Commanding General and 54th U.S. Army Chief of Engineers, yesterday celebrated completion of the East Rockaway Inlet Maintenance Dredging and Beach Restoration Project.
The announcement of the project’s completion was made on the boardwalk by the Army Corps and the City of New York.
New York City’s Mayor Bill De Blasio hosted a press conference on May 14th along with Lt. Gen. Todd Semonite, Chief of Engineers where an announcement was made on the completion of the East Rockaway Inlet maintenance dredging and beach restoration project from Beach 92nd Street to 106th Street.
The project’s success can be attributed to the Army Corps’ New York District partnership with the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation and a $10.7 million contract performed by Weeks Marine of Cranford, N.J. that removed approximately 348,000 cubic yards of sand from the East Rockaway Inlet.
The City of New York contributed $2.7 million to beneficially reuse the sand dredged from the inlet. The sand was placed from Beach 92nd Street to 106th Street as a coastal flood risk reduction measure to replace sand lost due to heavy erosion following last year’s nor’easters.
The work also ensures safe transit for commercial and recreational waterborne vessels, as the East Rockaway Inlet was restored to an authorized depth of 12 feet deep and 250 feet wide.
Michael Oseback, project engineer, explained how the work was performed: “ Weeks Marine utilized its C.R. McCaskill 30-inch 20,000 horsepower cutter suction dredge. The material was dredged at the head of the pipe, which pumped approximately four miles through a submerge pipe, and then discharged it from a connecting land pipe .”
The New York District is now in the process of receiving the final approvals from Army Corps headquarters for the Rockaway and Jamaica Bay Reevaluation Report.
The Report will authorize the construction, at 100 percent Federal cost of new erosion control features, such as jetties (or groins), additional beach fill, reinforced dunes, as well as flood risk reduction features on both the Atlantic Ocean and bayside shoreline of the Rockaway Peninsula.
Plans also call for an increased beach berm with 1.6 million cubic yards of sand for initial placement, the extension of five groins already in place, and construction of 13 new groins – all designed to help reduce the risk from coastal storms and provide additional resiliency for residents and businesses of this community.