EDIZ HOOK — A Port Angeles construction company began dumping gravel and cobble on the seaward shore of Ediz Hook last week to counteract erosion.
Bruch & Bruch Construction Inc. of Port Angeles will place 50,000 tons of material on the sand spit between now and February.
The Army Corps of Engineers awarded the $626,000 contact to the Port Angeles company in September.
Wave erosion and a lack of new sediment feeding the spit caused bank failure on several hundred feet of the northwest side of the spit facing the Strait of Juan de Fuca, according to an Army Corps of Engineers environmental assessment.
Rounded gravel and cobble will be placed in two stockpiles, smoothed over by a bulldozer and allowed to disperse over the sand spit.
The material will create a 12-foot-high berm and extend some 25 feet into the Strait, the environmental assessment said.
The stockpiles are expected to spread out on their own, adding 6.5 acres of naturally sloping beach over a distance of nearly a mile.
Routine work
Erosion control work is done routinely on Ediz Hook every five to seven years, said John Hicks, chief of navigation for the Army Corps of Engineers.
The purpose is to protect Port Angeles Harbor from direct wave action and preserve access to the Coast Guard’s Air Station/Sector Field Office Port Angeles at the tip of the sand spit.
A reduction in sand, gravel and cobble carried to Ediz Hook on longshore currents can be attributed to shoreline armoring west of the spit and the two Elwha dams, the Army Corps of Engineers has said.
A 35 percent increase in sediment load from the Elwha River is expected after the removal of the Elwha and Glines Canyon dams, which began in September.
But it could be up to five years before sediment is seen on Ediz Hook, according to a 1996 environmental impact statement on the dams removal project.
Full demolition of the Elwha Dam, which is five miles from the river’s mouth, is expected in early 2013, and of the Glines Canyon Dam, 14 miles upriver, a year later.