THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, October 12, 1996 TAG: 9610120271
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY PAUL CLANCY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: 55 lines
Beyond the first stage of the Virginia Beach Hurricane Protection Project, an eight-block segment of the seawall and Boardwalk, the timetable is up for grabs, city and Army Corps of Engineers officials say.
But tentatively, next October, after most of the 1997 tourists leave town, the sand pumps and bulldozers will take aim at the Beach's North End.
The plan calls for enhancing dunes, where necessary, and raising and widening the beach.
Two years ago, North End residents took a strong stand against the project, saying it was not needed. Some said it would infringe on their views and bring unwanted traffic to streets that already have limited parking.
And they opposed the construction of elevated crossing structures as unsightly.
But the city and the Corps made a number of concessions, including changing the crossings to at-grade wooden walkways.
And a tentative agreement was reached to improve storm drainage, a constant problem at the North End.
``We resigned ourselves to getting the best plan we could, without dropping our opposition,'' Roger L. Visser, past president of the North Virginia Beach Civic League said Friday.
City officials said this week that a new pumping station at 65th Street and improvements to an existing station at 79th Street will be part of the project.
The pump stations are supposed to force storm water out to sea instead of across the beach.
The city, the Corps and residents ``have coordinated this project to death,'' said Carl A. Thoren, the city's beach management engineer. ``We have gone to great extremes to make sure every effected party has had a chance to voice an opinion.''
The project calls for dunes that are at least 18 feet high and 25 feet wide, with crosswalks at every street. The crosswalks will be 8 feet wide, enough, officials say, to allow two people carrying beach paraphernalia to pass each other and to be wheelchair-accessible.
Visser contends that the Corps included the North End in its project only because it's much cheaper to protect the homes there by only rebuilding dunes than it is to build an expensive seawall. The result: a lower ``cost-benefit ratio'' to the Corps.
``If they hadn't put us in, the program would not have flown,'' he said.
In fact, the dunes in many places are already wide enough and will be left alone.
James Creighton, the project manager for the Corps, points out that North End beaches are wide only because they receive much of the sand that has been regularly placed at the south end. The tidal drift at the Oceanfront is from south to north.
But all that could change.
``If we get a major storm, it could well wash all of the sand at the North End away,'' Creighton said. by CNB