The Mandeville City Council has cleared the way for the start of repairs to a section of the deteriorating sea wall along Lake Pontchartrain.
At its Jan. 25 meeting, the council unanimously approved a resolution granting Mayor Clay Madden authority to enter into a professional services agreement with Burk-Kleinpeter Inc. for engineering services on the first phase of the sea wall restoration project.
The work involves removing and replacing the concrete bulkhead cap and concrete splash blocks, as well as repairing steel joint connections and damaged steel sheet piling on the eastern half of the approximately 1.5-mile long wall.
City officials will do the work in phases to spread the cost over several years.
The design work cost is given as $380,561.61, and the estimated first phase construction cost is $2.2 million.
The city’s 2023-24 municipal budget, approved by the council in August, allocates $2 million toward repairs to the sea wall, which was built in 1993 and is showing signs of deterioration.
In early 2023, a consultant recommended roughly $4.3 million in repairs to the wall.
At the Jan. 25 meeting, city officials said the other half of the sea wall would be repaired after the first phase is completed, but no timetable was given.
“Last year, we had authorized an inspection from end to end of that wall to determine what needed to be repaired,” at-large council member Jason Zuckerman said while introducing the resolution. “We now have all of that information, and we have a contract in front of us … to actually do the design work and put that out to bid and get that work done.”
The inspection completed in early 2023 showed surface corrosion on sheet piling beneath the water and advanced corrosion in other locations and on the concrete cap expansion joints. Inspectors also found cracks in the wall’s concrete cap, varying in width from 1/16th to 1/8th of an inch.
Consultants said the city has the option of either making the repairs now or replacing the wall with a new one that would last about 75 years. However, that alternative would cost about $19 million, and the hefty price tag prompted the decision to instead repair the existing structure.
