by Mike Sharkey
Staff Writer
The Duval County beaches will soon get a facelift.
Bean Stuyvesant, LLC, a New Orleans-based coastal engineering company, was the low bidder for this summer’s beach renourishment project. The company’s bid was $6,578,900 for a project the Army Corps of Engineers estimated will cost $7,716,000.
Bean’s bid was lower than Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Company ($7,299,550) of Oak Brook, Ill. and significantly lower than Weeks Marine of Crawford, N.J., which came in with a bid of $11,163,000.
Ron Schumaker of the City’s engineering department of public works said the next step is getting a signed contract.
“The project is starting at the end of June and will take about three months,” said Schumaker, who won’t be around to watch, as he resigned last week to seek a position in the private sector. “The Corps of Engineers is overseeing the project and they will have to process Bean through their system and then issue a notice of award.”
The project calls for both Atlantic Beach and Jacksonville Beach to be renourished. Schumaker said both beaches lost a lot of sand when four hurricanes affected the area to various degrees last fall. Neptune Beach, he said, held up pretty well.
The last time Jacksonville Beach was renourished, the company doing the work inadvertently pumped thousands of cubic yards of dirty sand onto the beach. Everything from rotting oyster shells to smelly sludge wound up on the beach.
“Last time, the project was in conjunction with a maintenance dredging project,” explained Schumaker. “It worked for a while until they hit a pocket of oyster shells. There’s always an element of the unknown because you don’t know exactly what’s down there.”
Bean, the United States partner of Royal Boskalis Westminster, which is headquartered in The Netherlands, will set up eight miles offshore and pull sand from the bottom of the ocean. That sand will then be shipped closer to shore where it will be pumped through pipes onto the beach. In the past, beach renourishment projects have been a boon to shell collectors.
Bean also specializes in navigation enhancement, coastal restoration, environmental remediation and land reclamation. Schumaker said he wasn’t sure if the project would start in Atlantic Beach or Jacksonville Beach, but they won’t be done at the same time.