Update: Installing Shoreline Protection Under The New Shoreline Management Plan.

In a post on October 25th, 2019 we shared with you some comments by shoreline resident Sid Huff on his experience installing shoreline protection under the new guidelines. Sid has kindly updated us on his progress and here are his comments.

I’m very happy to tell you that our contractor finished the wall construction a few weeks ago. We had assumed that he would be doing it during the winter months, but that didn’t turn out to be the case.

Each of us received an interim invoice from the contractor to cover the cost of the steel, back in October 2019 – roughly half of the total that we had agreed with him. So at that point, we were hopeful that he would commence the work fairly soon after that. However, apparently there were some extended difficulties in getting the steel beams and panels manufactured and delivered, though I don’t have much information on that. From what I can tell, it wasn’t the contractor’s fault, and perhaps not the steel producer’s fault either. It might have had something to do with tariffs between the US and Canada, or with the supply chain of materials to the steel manufacturer, some other reason.

The steel was finally produced and delivered to the contractor in March 2020 and stored on an empty lot near Sararas Road. (Some of the steel was destined for a similar job the contractor had secured near that location.) The contractor did finally start on our structure in early April and actually finished it up fairly quickly, within about three weeks. (There were a number of days during that period when the contractor couldn’t work on our structure, because the wind and the waves were too high.) I and my two neighbors have now received our final invoices. There were no issues here, the contractor charged us precisely what we had agreed upon (on a handshake only) back in the summer of 2019. And from my relatively untutored eye, the wall itself appears to be very well made and fully up to the task of protecting our bank from further erosion.

Personally, my wife and I are extremely happy that this is finally done. It’s a lot easier to sleep soundly at night when the wind is howling in from the west and the waves are substantial, knowing that they are not doing further erosion damage at the base of our bank. While the financial cost has been considerable, looking back on it at this point, it is fully worth it.