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O

riental’s breakwater is getting a makeover. A crew has started to place one-ton granite stones on the jetty that separates Oriental’s harbor from the Neuse River. 1500 rocks — and possibly more — will be used to to shore up a low spot that has allowed waves to breach the breakwater for decades.

At left are the first of the 1500 one-ton armor stones that have been put in to place to fill a gap in Oriental’s breakwater. The repair should make for calmer waters in the harbor.

A four-man crew from Paul Howard Construction is doing the work on the Army Corps of Engineers breakwater rehabilitation project. Originally estimated to take about a month, progress was slowed in the first week by high winds and low water. That made it difficult — and impossible some days — to bring the barge close to the breakwater.

The breakwater rehabilitation project will fill in the low spot and make the entire jetty the same height. That could mean stacking rock up to five feet high for a 100-200 foot long stretch.

The project focuses on the last 300 feet of the 650 foot long jetty.

Chris Frabotta, Navigation Project Engineer with the Corps says the rehabilitation job had been on the to-do list since the late 1980s. The $340,000 to pay for it only came through last year as part of the Obama administration’s stimulus package.

As seen from the land end of the breakwater, a one ton stone is dropped in to place. The granite comes from a quarry in Virginia.

Graden Barker knows that particular part of the breakwater well. The 93 year old Oriental resident is also more familiar than most with why there is that opening in the wall of stone.

When Barker was a boy in the 1920’s there was no breakwater. The harbor, he says, was “awful rough” and the only thing between the harbor and the river was a string of “6 or 7 islands” with grasses growing on them.

You could walk from one island to the next, Barker says, “clear out to the beacon,” where the navigation marker now stands.

Murray Degnan with the Army Corps of Engineers on Tuesday near the low spot in the breakwater which will be filled in with heavy stone. At right are some of the stones that were put in to place last week. The finished project will give a uniform height to the jetty.

Barker spent time playing in the shallows as a child. “Oh boy,” he recalled Monday, “I used to pick up soft crabs by hand.”

It was a safe enough pastime, until the day when he ventured toward one of the outlying islands in search of crab. Barker says he suddenly was almost down to his waist in the water because he’d stepped in to an area of quicksand.

The low spot. A few hundred feet of the Oriental breakwater, and the dip that has long been familiar to local residents and those on boats. Many days, the rocks barely show and waves from the Neuse pass in to the harbor. (When this photo was taken Tuesday, the water levels were lower than usual.)

“I like to have drowned,” he recalls. He pulled himself out by grabbing a handful of the grasses growing on the nearest island.

The breakwater story continues on page two – click here >>>

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Posted Wednesday February 17, 2010 by Melinda Penkava

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