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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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Graden Barker was a grown man before the Town of Oriental had a breakwater installed in 1955. He says that his father put in the jetty with a New Bern company. Early on, he says, his father warned Oriental’s Town Board that the heavy stones would sink in to the spot of quicksand.

They did.

The barge used to ferry piles of the one-ton granite to the part of the breakwater that is being shored up.

What Barker describes as quicksand, the Army Corps of Engineers calls a “depressed, settled area.” By whatever name, that opening in the breakwater has let waves crash though when storms fetch up. In calmer times, it served as a gauge; a person looking at that opening from the Town Dock could tell at a glance just how high the river water was.

The crew who are shoring up the breakwater: Jason Philip, David Brinkley, Greg House, Eric Champion.

In about a month’s time, that will change. Crews from Paul Howard Construction are using a barge to stack the one-ton stone as much as five feet high in order to bring the breakwater to a uniform height.

The lighter colored granite are the newly placed stones. 1500 of them are being added to shore up the wall and fill in the gap in the breakwater. It could make for calmer water in the harbor and at the Oriental Yacht Club, in the background.

It is thought to be the first significant repair to the breakwater in 55 years. Given the history of the boulders sinking in to the river bed in that one spot, some local residents have wondered if the weight of more boulders would lower in to that soft spot, too.

The Corps of Engineers did not drill the river bed to examine core samples in advance of the current project. Chris Frabotta says that the Corps did compare surveys of the breakwater done in the 1980s and more recently and did not see any further settlement over that span of years.

The estimated cost of the project was $340,000 but already, Frabotta says, there has been an “overrun.” More stone than anticipated will be needed to complete the job.

Project Manager William Talley and inspector Murray Degnan of the Army Corps of Engineers who visited the site on Tuesday.

Along with this breakwater restoration job, The Corps of Engineers also authorized a dredging of the channel in to Oriental. But while authorized, that part of the project was not funded. Frabotta says the funding process takes 16 months of going to the President and Congress.

An overview of the breakwater rehabilitation project. The aerial shot also shows the route of the channel in to the harbor. While the breakwater rehab is funded, monies to pay for dredging the channel have not yet come through.

There’s lot of competition for that dredging money. 70 other dredging projects have also been authorized by the Corps in NC.

Project sign attached to the fence at the end of South Avenue.

Posted Wednesday February 17, 2010 by Melinda Penkava