After building up a stockpile of six-to-ten-ton rocks at the Port of Garibaldi through May and early June, contractors working to repair the south jetty at the entrance to Tillamook Bay have started transporting rocks across the bay to Kincheloe Point.
Andy Leavitt, project manager and president of Trade West Construction, the company performing the work, said that crews would begin placing stones near the root of the jetty within the month, at which point work will speed up.
Up to this point, stones have only been arriving at the staging area at the Port of Garibaldi in the early hours of the morning but as work ramps up, they will become common during the day.
Leavitt said that they hope to place between 500 and 600 tons of stone a day once they are operating at full capacity. Throughout the entire project, crews will place around 100,000 tons, or between four and six thousand individual rocks, helping to repair two, separate sections of the jetty near its root and head.
Initially, the stones are being transported from the Port of Garibaldi staging area to Kincheloe Point directly on the deck of the barge but they will soon be placed in the backs of transport trucks that will drive onto the barge and then directly to the jetty upon offload.
Before any of this work could begin, crews spent months preparing the area at Bayocean County Park between Kincheloe Point and the root of the south jetty to support the repair. Those efforts included constructing a portion of new road and improving another section of existing road to accommodate the large transport trucks in the mile between the offload site and jetty. Crews also cleared a 10-acre site near the root of the jetty to be used for secondary staging of the stones, although Garrett Bryner, a quality control manager for Trade West, said that ideally rocks would move straight from the barge to the jetty.
Workers also installed a temporary scale that will weigh the rocks for final payment to the contractor.
Two or three teams of stone spotters and placers will be responsible for placing the rocks into the jetty using excavators. Leavitt said that finding people capable of performing the painstaking task of maneuvering the stones into the perfect position was difficult but that his crews had become experienced enough to move a stone from a barge into the jetty in Coos Bay in under an hour.
Work will begin on a 600-foot section of the jetty near its root this year, before focus moves to an 800-foot section near the head at the end of the jetty. Relatively smaller rocks will be used on the root section, while larger rocks, some weighing up to 40 tons, will be used near the head. The two sections are separated by a 3500-foot section of jetty on which crews will construct a temporary road for hauling the stones.
Leavitt said that the team had budgeted for work stoppages during the winter months, but that rain alone would not impede their work, only waves overtopping the jetty or winds exceeding safety limits.
In addition to repairing the two sections of the jetty, the $52.7-million project will see the jetty’s head re-established with a 40-foot width at the end. All areas around the worksite will also be restored to their pre-project state, including the removal of the one-mile section of road.
Leavitt said that the team was doing what it could to minimize the impacts of the project on locals and to leave the community better than they found it. To that end, workers have performed maintenance and upgrades at the Tillamook Elks RV Campground, where they are staying.
Contractors are also monitoring a population of western snowy plovers that have a nesting site near the 10-acre staging area that was cleared near the end of the jetty. In addition to installing stakes to discourage the birds from taking up residence in the active construction area, workers are also driving around the site daily to check for their presence.
Access to the work site is restricted to authorized personnel. Although there are no barriers to entry, the contractors said that so far, a public outreach campaign including signage at the Bayocean County Park parking area has kept most people from wandering through. They stressed that as the large stones start moving it will be critical that members of the public give the workers a wide berth in the bay and on the beach.
The United States Army Corps of Engineers is managing all aspects of the project and responsible for ensuring Trade West’s compliance with safety, quality, environmental, schedule and cost provisions in its contract. The project is being funded by the Infrastructure and Jobs Act of 2021 and aims to restore the jetty’s functionality to maintain the navigability of the entrance to Tillamook Bay.
To receive updates on the project and impacts to Bayocean County Park, email cenwp-construction@usace.army.mil.
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