The fate of the proposed $5.6 million North Bluff seawall restoration, one of the most expensive infrastructure projects in Oak Bluffs town history, may rest in the hands of the Martha’s Vineyard Commission (MVC), which is reviewing the project as a development of regional impact (DRI) as the funding clock ticks away.
The regional permitting agency is scheduled to resume a public hearing, which began last week, at 7 pm this Thursday at the MVC meeting room on New York Avenue in Oak Bluffs. A vote on the project is possible.
The DRI hearings mark another in a series of unexpected delays that have bedeviled the project since $5.6 million in state funding — $3.6 million from the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR) dam and seawall fund, and $2 million from the state Seaport Advisory Council — was approved in June.
Both grants may be lost if the project is not completed, or close to it, by June 30, 2016, according to town administrator Robert Whritenour.
Acknowledging the ticking clock, Commissioner Linda Sibley of West Tisbury, with the unanimous support of the commission, last week moved to continue the hearing to this Thursday, in order to give the MVC time for further study, to allow for more public comment and to allow Carlos Pena, project engineer from CLE Engineering, time to create new renderings of the project. Although Mr. Pena had provided schematic side-view drawings and a front elevation rendering of the corrugated steel seawall and boardwalk, commissioners agreed with the opponents of the project that the front elevation was lacking in detail.
At the conclusion of last Thursday’s hearing, Ms. Sibley said the upcoming holidays are going to complicate a timely review. “This probably means January,” she said, to Mr. Pena’s visible chagrin.
The Times asked Netco Construction project manager David Lager if the additional delay would jeopardize the project. He declined to comment, and deferred to town administrator Robert Whritenour.
In an email to The Times on Friday, Mr. Whritenour wrote that while there is no drop-dead date, “After the middle of January, I would estimate that delays may impede our schedule.”
The North Bluff seawall project has been in the works since 2008, when Kevin Mooney at the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR) encouraged the town to address the crumbling wall, built in 1940. The DCR subsequently awarded the town a $65,000 grant for engineering work on the North Bluff. The project was first designed as a concrete seawall, but after years of unfruitful to-and-fro for funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the town looked to other funding sources and to a less expensive alternative, leading to the corrugated steel design, and the state funding that is in place, for now.
Opponents of the redoubt redo filled most of the seats at the packed hearing on Dec. 10. They primarily objected to the corrugated steel composition of the seawall, to the loss of beach due to boulders that would front the seawall, and to an approval process they contended excluded the public. Some questioned if there was even a need for a new seawall.
Doubts about redoubt
“I’m not convinced we need a new wall,” former selectman Kerry Scott said. Ms. Scott went on to lambaste the conservation commission (ConCom) for its lack of public outreach.
“I have no respect for the conservation commission,” she said, adding that personally she has a great deal of respect for conservation agent Liz Durkee. “If the conservation commission and the town administrator had handled this correctly, we wouldn’t be here today.”
Ms. Scott went on to list the dates of four ConCom public hearings that were essentially devoid of any public input: Feb. 8, 2010; May 25, 2010; June 3, 2014; and June 16, 2015. Ms. Scott said a presentation at the selectmen’s meeting on June 30 was not listed as a hearing on the agenda, but rather as an “update” on the North Bluff seawall, which the town website confirmed.
At that June 30 meeting, Mr. Pena presented a slide show detailing the seawall plan that is currently under review by the MVC. ConCom chairman Joan Hughes told selectmen at that meeting, “After seven years of intense planning and fundraising, we finally have a good plan and the money to do it.”
“We’ve been told funding is going away,” Ms. Scott said Thursday. “This is a catastrophic loss of a town beach. We can get funding later. We can’t get more beach.”
North Bluff resident Mark Wallace echoed Ms. Scott’s sentiments. “We’re not allowed to go to up-Island beaches, and we’re going to throw ours away,” he said. Mr. Wallace also questioned the need for the proposed boardwalk that will run atop the new seawall. “We don’t need a link between the Island Queen and the SSA, we already have it. There’s a sidewalk that works just fine,” he said.
Not holding up
Mr. Pena was in the hot seat for most of the three-hour-long hearing. At the end of public comment, he addressed a long list of notes.
“I don’t agree the wall is in good shape or anywhere close,” he said. “I’m surprised it’s lasted as long as it has. It was built in the 1940s. There’s no reinforcement steel. It’s a weak wall. They built it with concrete made from beach sand. It was the best they could do at the time, but it’s not holding up.”
Mr. Pena backed up his assertion with data he’s collected over the past six years, including measurements from standard penetration tests and soil tests which showed a wide variety of soil beneath the span of the seawall.
Mr. Pena said that the corrugated steel wall was roughly a third the cost of a concrete wall. In addition, if a concrete wall was built four feet higher to accommodate sea level rise, per CLE specs, it would likely not be supported by the soil below, and could potentially result in liquefaction.
“We created an efficient system, and when we ran the numbers, we were pleasantly surprised,” he said. “From an engineering standpoint, [the steel wall] works really well.” Just how much of that steel will be exposed was a sticking point, which is why Mr. Pena was asked to return with enhanced visuals.
Beach nourishment planned
Commissioner Jim Vercruysse of Aquinnah said before he would vote to approve the project, he would need to see a plan and a timeline for replacing the beach that would be lost to the three- to four-ton boulders that will front the corrugated steel seawall.
Mr. Pena said that since 2011, CLE and Ms. Durkee have been working to obtain permits for a major beach-nourishment project that would take dredge spoils from Sengekontacket Pond and build up the beach at North Bluff below the mean high water (MHW) mark. The effort will also include replacing the timber groins that that will help keep that sand in place. “There is no natural sand source; this beach will eventually disappear, regardless of what we build,” Mr. Pena said.
Mr. Pena said the beach nourishment program is separate from the seawall restoration project. He said he was optimistic about funding for the project, given the well-funded Coastal Resiliency Program, administered by the Massachusetts Office of Coastal Zone Management (CZM).
In an OpEd published this week in The Times (“A seawall for the greater good”) and sent as a letter to the MVC, Oak Bluffs conservation agent Liz Durkee said a key point about the North Bluff seawall project was not raised last week. “It is the concept of the common good — the greatest possible good for the greatest number of people in a community,” she said. “The North Bluff seawall is a failed seawall … This project is necessary to protect the coastal infrastructure of a heavily used, vital transportation route … failure of this seawall would truly be a regional disaster.”
Time is critical
The town has raised the stakes of the MVC hearing with a series of self-inflicted delays, beginning with a muddled bidding process. After selectmen unanimously voted on Sept. 22 to accept a $5.25 million bid from Westborough-based MIG Corp, contingent on additional Community Preservation Committee (CPC) funding, Weymouth-based Northern Construction, the second-place bidder, filed a bid protest with the state attorney general, citing ambiguous wording in the Request for Proposal (RFP).
In response, Oak Bluffs selectmen, on the advice of the state attorney general’s office, town counsel Michael Goldsmith, and town administrator Robert Whritenour, voted to rescind their decision, and to rebid the project. At the time, Mr. Whritenour said the rebid process could spare the town a long appeals process and also possibly save the town money in a more competitive bidding climate. His words proved prophetic when selectmen voted unanimously on Oct. 27 to accept a new bid from Northern Construction for $4.9 million, saving the town roughly $270,000 from the previously accepted MIG bid.
In the meantime, however, MIG had taken legal action against the town of Oak Bluffs, and sought a preliminary injunction in Middlesex Superior Court.
On Oct. 19, Justice Rosalind H. Miller denied MIG’s motion. While acknowledging the RFP was ambiguously worded, she wrote that MIG was “unlikely to succeed on the merits” of its case, and concluded in her six-page decision, “Even if MIG could demonstrate a likelihood of success, injunctive relief would adversely affect the public … jeopardizing funding for this sorely needed project which is contingent upon a completion date of June 30, 2016.”
Although the rebidding process had effectively burned a month of valuable time, on Oct. 28, project manager Mr. Lager told The Times that he was still confident the project could be completed by June 30.
On Nov. 17, the Oak Bluffs planning board, citing a lack of public input and concerns that the project would unduly sacrifice a valuable town beach, put its collective foot down and in a unanimous 4-0 vote referred the project to the Martha’s Vineyard Commission (MVC) as a development of regional impact (DRI).
The potential loss of funding has sharply divided town officials.
“It was the only way we could get the public involved with the process,” planning board chairman Brian Packish told The Times. “The plan had changed drastically from the first one that was presented years ago, and the public has had virtually no say in any of it.”
“It is the planning board’s right to refer the project [to the MVC],” chairman of the selectmen Mike Santoro told The Times after the planning board’s decision. “But I take issue with the accusations that we weren’t transparent. This has been discussed many times at open meetings over the past two years.”
