By RUSS HENDERSON
Staff Reporter
Less than a year after Hurricane Ivan doubled to $4 million the cost of a taxpayer-funded wall of sand to protect houses on Dauphin Island, federal engineers this summer will redesign the project yet again to account for beach erosion caused by Tropical Storm Cindy and Hurricane Dennis.
"We can't go in with the same plan we had at the start of the year," said Pat Robbins, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers spokesman, referring to the corps' post-Ivan plan unveiled in January that had doubled the project's original $2 million price tag.
The cost rose because of the addition of a wide shelf of sand, a replacement beach of sorts, to go under the berm on the island's southwest shore.
Corps officials said the latest redesign will move the projected start date forward from September to October. Robbins said it remains to be seen whether the redesign will yield a yet more expensive proposal. But Town Councilman Mike Tafra said it was "only realistic to think it'll be more expensive."
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If the expense rises, the town will likely have to pay more than its expected $310,000 share -- the town's part of a 75 percent federal-25 percent local cost-sharing arrangement with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said Mayor Jeff Collier.
Still, the higher cost is bound to be less than the $620,000 the town had expected to pay until last week, Collier said.
FEMA officials said last week that the town won't have to pay anything for projects repairing Hurricane Ivan's vast erosion on the island, Collier said. That means FEMA and the state of Alabama will shoulder the full costs of the $2 million shelf to be placed under the berm.
Collier said the town will still have to pay 25 percent of the cost of the berm itself -- about $310,000.
That's because the berm project was authorized two years before Ivan came ashore. Officially, the project was a response to the powerful Tropical Storm Isidore, which in 2002 flattened most of what remained of the previous $1 million berm built in 2000. As strong as it was, Isidore wasn't a major hurricane, so it didn't qualify for the higher-level funding of Ivan, Collier said.
"We have a few projects down here now brought on by different storms, so it all gets a little tangled sounding," Collier said.
Tropical Storm Arlene blew into the northern Gulf of Mexico last month, followed by Tropical Storm Cindy, which brought flooding and high tides just five days before Hurricane Dennis. While Ivan's tremendous waves gulped tons of island beach sand and demolished 33 homes there in September, none of the more recent storms damaged island property badly.
They still caused erosion, though -- sucking away sand here, piling it up there, Robbins said. "The shoreline changed shape, so the project has to change to fit it," he said.
The island's first protective sand wall was constructed in June 2000 as an emergency project initiated after Hurricane Georges put many west end island homes in the high tide line. FEMA paid $750,000 of the berm's $1.3 million cost, while island property owners raised $250,000 though a grassroots effort.
No such grassroots effort emerged after Isidore destroyed that berm.
Last year, the Town Council voted to pay $310,000 in matching funds necessary to build the berm. Still to be decided are the town's plans to regain the costs through special tax levies, which have met criticism from some property owners.