09/22/2006

Special to the Record-Eagle/Kevin Johnston
Repair work on Petoskey’s breakwall started last week under beautiful fall skies, but wind, rain and high waves sidelined the project.

Weather slows breakwall repairs

Crews wait to get stone from Wisconsin

By CRAIG McCOOL

mccoolrecordeagle@sbcglobal.net

Special to the Record-Eagle/Kevin Johnston
Army Corp of Engineers tugboats Kenosha and Racine position the barges that hold the boulders and crane to be used to repair Petoskey's breakwall.

PETOSKEY — Bad weather put breakwall repairs on hold until the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers can safely cross Lake Michigan and return with more stone.

Corps workers have placed about 1,600 tons of rock in a gap washed away by a March storm, said David Foster, chief engineer of the Lake Michigan office in Grand Haven. Two empty deck scows are ready to make the crossing to Manitowoc, Wis., to be loaded with more boulders, and then return the 160 miles across Lake Michigan to Petoskey, Foster said.

"It's not looking good until after the weekend. Saturday, the waves are supposed to be up to 14 feet," he said. "It's going to depend on the weather."

The breakwater protecting the city's marina dates back to the 1890s. Concrete slabs sit on stone-filled cedar cribs. A windstorm last November damaged the cribs, and part of the breakwater settled. Heavy ice and windy conditions on March 13 washed away two sections.

The Corps was able to divert about $427,000 leftover from other 2006 projects to fix the breakwall, filling the roughly 50-foot gap with large boulders. Repairs began Sept. 15. Once the rest of the stone reaches Petoskey, finishing the project shouldn't take long.

"It'll take us about two days, probably, to place the stone. It just depends on how it all fits together," Foster said. "We might take another day to make it all look good, so we've got a nice walking surface on the top."

When finished, Corps officials will have placed about 3,500 tons of rock. It's a temporary repair, and the rest of the structure doesn't look good, Foster said.

"If we had a bad storm, we could breech it again in other areas, or blow off ... the end of the structure," Foster said. "The top two layers of the timbers are almost completely gone in some places. I just hope we don't really have a nasty storm."