Jessica Cejnar Andrews / Tuesday, Aug. 6 @ 12:20 p.m.
Crescent City Gets Cash Flow Help Courtesy of McGuire, Caltrans, Moves Forward With Pebble Beach Drive Repairs
Crescent City Public Works Director Dave Yeager talks to Coastal Commissioners about the slide on Pebble Beach Drive at their visit in May. | File photo: Jessica C. Andrews
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Roughly $7.9 million in state funding is available to help Crescent City overcome its cash flow issues and move forward with repairs needed to reopen Pebble Beach Drive.
That $7.9 million coming to the city thanks to State Sen. Mike McGuire and Caltrans, City Manager Eric Wier told councilors on Monday. This announcement came just before the City Council unanimously ratified a $3.2 million contract with Tidewater Contractors to complete the project before Nov. 30.
“For this work coming up, they are proposing to build a micropile-soil nail wall system,” Wier said. “This wall can get built in the timeframe we’re stuck with at this point and it’ll be done hopefully before the rains hit.”
In addition to the agreement with Tidewater, the City Council ratified a contract with COWI for approximately $230,000 for project management and engineering services. The city manager referred to both agreements as time and material contracts, saying “you don’t really know until you get in to understand exactly what you’re dealing with.”
Councilors also extended an emergency declaration they originally issued July 15. That declaration allowed Wier to bypass the competitive bidding process when executing the contracts needed to complete the emergency repairs.
Crescent City is using $6.8 million in state Emergency Opening dollars to make repairs to the scenic drive between 7th and 8th streets after a landslide undermined the road in January.
Those dollars are available to Crescent City thanks to a disaster declaration California Gov. Gavin Newsom issued in June. Though the storms occurred in January, the declaration added Del Norte County to a list of counties that experienced extensive damage from storms in March.
On Monday, Wier told the City Council that the city had revised its damage assessment form and was informed on July 26 that the Federal Highways Administration is authorizing a total of $39 million, which includes the $6.8 million dedicated to fix the damage that occurred in January.
The remaining $33 million stems from damage that occurred to Pebble Beach Drive following storms in December 2016 and will be reimbursed to Crescent City once Congress allocates the money, according to Wier.
Crescent City has had a contract with COWI for several years to develop a permanent erosion control system for Pebble Beach Drive.
On Monday, Councilman Jason Greenough asked Wier if the city had been in touch with Congressman Jared Huffman about the FHA funding.
Wier said he would reach out to Huffman to get an update on whether Congress would allocate those FHA dollars, but it wouldn’t come to the city soon enough to meet its cashflow needs.
“These are going to be large sums of money — we’re going to spend, basically $3.5 million between now and November,” Wier said. “And typically on a reimbursement basis, our experience is the shortest timeframe is about 90 days going all the way out to six months before we would see a check.”
Crescent City needed cash in hand to complete the emergency repairs by the Nov. 30 deadline, Wier said. The $7.9 million will be for the emergency repairs and the larger bank stabilization project, according to the city’s staff report.
“That’s where the state is stepping in,” he said. “Our communication with the state on this is that they will be able to at the worst-case scenario reimburse us in a very short timeframe, 24-48 hours.”
Wier said he had been having weekly calls with McGuire’s office and with Caltrans.
Tidewater Contractors already sent an excavator over the embankment last week to dig for bedrock so they can determine where to place the micropile-soil nail wall, Wier said. Most of the work is expected to start in mid-August with the specialty contractors coming in after Labor Day, he said.
According to Wier, Tidewater Contractors and their sub-consultant Geostabilization International (GSI) will be designing and building the project.
The micropile wall system involves drilling rebar vertically into the bedrock and then pouring a concrete grade beam to “lock everything into place.” Those vertical elements will be about 18 inches apart, Wier said.
A soil nail wall system involves driving soil nails horizontally into the bank itself. The whole thing will then be bonded with Shotcrete — a type of concrete that’s applied on a vertical face, Wier said.
COWI will construct a rock-slope protection system needed to ensure the wall is protected from wave action, according to Wier.
“We are looking at this as a possible wall that could be a permanent solution as well,” he told city councilors.
Councilwoman Kelly Schellong urged her colleagues to consider sending a letter of thanks to McGuire.
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