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News
On budget, months ahead of schedule
Fort Monroe Seawall project nears completion
February 11, 2009
by Jerry Rogers
Norfolk District Public Affairs
The Fort Monroe Seawall Repair and Improvement Project, which resumed construction in March 2007, is nearing completion on budget and approximately four months ahead of schedule, said Project Manager Greg Hegge of Norfolk District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
All that remains is delivery and placement of the new Engineer Pier floodgate and satisfactory establishment of surrounding grass turf, Hegge said.
"Our contractor Waterfront Marine and their subcontractors overcame many obstacles to complete this project so successfully," said Hegge, "in fact, the entire project delivery team worked well together. A project of this scope required close coordination between the Fort Monroe Department of Public Works, Waterfront Marine and the staff of the Corps' Fort Monroe Field Office."
The $20 million military construction project began in the winter of 2003, immediately following the devastation wrought by Hurricane Isabel, but was suspended by the U.S. Army in July 2005, after Fort Monroe was included in the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) legislation. The secretary of defense reauthorized the project in November 2006.
The new seawall is being built in front of the existing structure to a uniform 9.5 foot elevation from its current average 7.5 foot elevation. The project repairs deficiencies and improves flood protection for Fort Monroe from its current 5-year level – a storm that has a 20 percent chance of occurring in any given year – to a 25-year level, a storm with a four percent annual occurrence rate. Hurricane Isabel was approximately a 40-year to 50-year event. Its peak storm surge elevation at nearby Sewells Point was measured at 6.25 feet.
The approximately 3,369-feet long seawall extends from the existing concrete pier west of the Chamberlin Hotel to just beyond the Fishing Pier, located behind Battery Parrott on Fenwick Drive. The Seawall project includes a new coated-steel sheet-pile seawall, with reinforced concrete cap on the waterside of the existing seawall. Additional stone protection at the toe of the new seawall protects it from wave erosion. Other features include new sidewalks, drainage improvements, a terminal groin, a coastal engineering structure designed to prevent beach erosion, four breakwaters or jetties and sand beach nourishment from the Fishing Pier northward to about 1,850 feet.