DATE: Saturday, April 19, 1997              TAG: 9704190314

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B3   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY PAUL CLANCY, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH                    LENGTH:   57 lines

COMPANY THAT BUILT RUDEE INLET GETS CONTRACT TO REOPEN IT THE COMPANY MUST BEGIN WORK BY APRIL 30 AND HAVE THE CHANNEL CLEAR BY MAY 22.

The company that created the modern Rudee Inlet 50 years ago won the contract Friday to reopen it.

Norfolk Dredging Co. of Chesapeake, one of the oldest and most experienced dredging companies on the East Coast, was low bidder at $382,000 in the emergency project to clear the troubled inlet.

Work will begin within two weeks.

Several fishing boats and yachts have run aground or scraped bottom trying to enter the inlet over the past year.

Suits have been filed and settled and, recently, fishing and tour boats have sat idle since the city was forced to close Rudee a week ago.

The main approach channel is supposed to be 12 feet deep at low tide, but the city, with low-power equipment and overworked crews, has been unable to keep it open.

Friday, after a night of dredging in high winds, there was still a bar across the channel with low-tide depths between four and five feet.

Norfolk Dredging must begin no later than April 30 and have the channel clear by May 22, with ``no weather delays, no excuses,'' said city Coastal Engineer Phillip Roehrs.

If the weather cooperates, the work of dredging 20,000 cubic yards could be done in a few days after the equipment, including dredger, tender, fuel barge and plastic pipes, is in place, said company Executive Vice President Russell Thorne.

It is a tricky job, Thorne said. ``You have to sit in the ocean and if the weather changes, there's no place to run to because if the inlet were open we wouldn't be there in the first place. We'd have to tow the equipment all the way to Little Creek.''

The company will employ a 3,900-horsepower pump, compared with the 500-horsepower pump used by Rudee II, the city's dredger.

City Council has been asked to come up with the money next year for a new dredger and significantly larger staff to handle the inlet and other dredging needs.

The money isn't in the city manager's 1997-98 proposed budget, which will be finalized next month. But several recent crises involving the inlet have forced some officials to take a second look.

Norfolk Dredging, begun in 1899, holds the second-oldest contractor's license in Virginia, Thorne said. It operates from Boston to Tampa, with most of its work concentrated in the Mid-Atlantic.

The inlet was first carved out of what was a narrow drainage ditch in 1927, but the work done by Norfolk Dredging in the 1940s expanded it to a major channel, according to the company's records.

The inlet is still posted as hazardous to mariners.

Roehrs said some boats have been entering and leaving Rudee at high tide and at their own risk, but only with extreme caution.

David Wright, who runs the High Hopes charter boat in the inlet, expressed the frustration of many boat captains at the shoaling problem:

``I lost two days last week that were calm enough for me to go fishing and big blue fish were right outside waiting.''

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