THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, January 5, 1996 TAG: 9601050489
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY SCOTT HARPER, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 70 lines
Contractors building a second bridge across the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay are asking to nearly double the amount of dredging they say is needed to complete the new 18-mile span.
If approved by environmental agencies, crews could scoop some 119,000 cubic yards of sandy bottom from shallows near the Eastern Shore known as Nine Foot Shoal - a spot where endangered sea turtles congregate and feed.
The Army Corps of Engineers endorsed the proposal last month, providing that no work is done in May and June, when sea turtles are most prevalent on the shoal, said Robert Berg, an environmental scientist with the corps.
But the Virginia Marine Resources Commission still is weighing the request.
Before signing off on it, the state wants to know what the contractors plan to do with the sandy wastes, said Randy Owen, a senior VMRC environmental scientist.
The state would prefer the material be spread on local beaches, as a way to control erosion and replenish lost sand. Indeed, Owen has asked the contractors to draft a plan showing where and how shoal wastes could be recycled as beach nourishment.
``When you have this much material, it can make a difference,'' Owen said. Virginia Beach, for example, must spread about 150,000 cubic yards a year to keep up its Oceanfront beaches.
When a joint venture led by PCL Civil Constructors Inc. won a $197 million contract last spring to build a parallel span to the aging Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, Nine Foot Shoal was not supposed to be dredged.
It was not included in a comprehensive environmental study of other dredging needs, which originally totaled 157,100 cubic yards of bottom material that had to be moved.
But PCL soon learned that the only way to move its construction barges onto the shoal was to make the water deeper. As it turns out, Nine Foot Shoal is actually about 4 feet deep in spots.
``They talked about dredging in there early in the process,'' said Berg, ``but I think they figured they could get in there by another way. But that's obviously not the case.''
So this fall, PCL and the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and Tunnel District asked that the shoal, along with its 119,000 cubic yards of bottom material, be added to a list of approved dredging projects - and that no additional environmental study be required.
The corps initially questioned whether PCL intentionally kept the sensitive shoal off the dredging list as a way to cut costs and controversy, Berg said.
After all, PCL had been embroiled in an intense bidding war with a local consortium for the new bridge contract, with only about $3 million separating the two rivals.
``We had that concern at first,'' Berg said.
``We wrote them (PCL) to that effect. But when you look at the scope of the work on this project, we realized you're just going to get these types of modifications.''
The corps approved the new dredging list, which now totals more than 260,000 cubic yards of material, including those from the shoal, on Dec. 11.
There remains a question of who will pay for the shoal dredging. PCL's project manager Ted Kirk said it's not clear whether his company or the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel and District should foot the bill.
But James K. Brookshire, the district's executive director, said he didn't believe his public agency would pay any additional costs.
``I don't anticipate any of this holding us up,'' Brookshire said, adding that the parallel span should still be built on time, by 1998.
KEYWORDS: CHESAPEAKE BAY BRIDGE TUNNEL DREDGING by CNB