ROCKAWAY BEACH NEW YORK

In September Weeks Marine crews resumed beach restoration work at Rockaway Beach part of the Corps of Engineers’ work to repair and restore the engineered beach.

Work was temporarily stopped this summer when as expected crews moving east reached nesting areas of the endangered piping plover around Beach 61st Street. The plovers have fledged and the no-construction environmental window ended at the beginning of September so crews resumed sand pumping operations through October.

Before the last installment dredges pumped roughly three million cubic yards of sand at Rockaway since Hurricane Sandy and in the final push placed an additional 500000 cubic yards to complete construction.

The repair and restore of Rockaway Beach is being completed through two contracts both awarded to Weeks Marine of Cranford New Jersey. The first contract completed in the fall of 2013 was a $10 million contract and involved the placement of roughly 600000 cubic yards of sand dredged from East Rockaway Inlet. The second contract which started this spring and finishing this fall is a $26.4 million contract that involves the placement of roughly 2.9 million cubic yards of sand.