With repairs to Grays Harbor’s North Jetty on the horizon, the city of Ocean Shores completed an initial step in the process Monday by granting the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers permission to stage equipment on city property when construction begins in fall 2024.

A City Council vote at Monday’s meeting authorized Ocean Shores Mayor Jon Martin to issue a right-of-way permit to the Corps, with the Port of Grays Harbor present as the project’s sponsor and liaison between the city and the Corps. The permit is good for four years — enough time for the Corps to solve a remaining design issue, complete environmental paperwork, award a contract, and then start and complete construction by 2026.

“The way the Army Corps of Engineers works is they need to make certain they’ve secured access to property before they engage in a lot of the steps that perhaps private business would do before they ask for permission,” said Art Blauvelt, attorney for the Port of Grays Harbor. “It’s very important to them that they have access before they start the final design, going out for solicitation of bids.”

The Corps can now enter two different city owned parcels on the southern end of the Ocean Shores peninsula: a long, thin, seven-and-a-half-acre strip separating East Ocean Shores Boulevard and the jetty’s rock berm, and a larger piece of land on the peninsula’s southeastern corner that contains the city’s wastewater treatment plant. A majority of supplies and equipment — trucks, a crane and the huge rocks for jetty reinforcement — will be staged on the land near the plant, Blauvelt said.

Shielding the treatment plant from the ocean elements, Martin said, is a big part of what the city stands to gain from jetty repairs.

“If you go down by our wastewater treatment, there’s the old jetty that’s really fallen apart, and you can see major erosion” threatening the plant, Martin said. Jetty repairs will also protect the Ocean Shores marina, Martin said.

Current designs for the maintenance project detail repairs to 6,500 feet of the jetty’s “trunk and root” — the area near the plant and hugging the bottom of the peninsula — plus 1,000 feet of repairs to the jetty tail, the section protruding into the Pacific. Boulder reinforcements will add three feet in height to that section, according to Corps designs.

The jetty trunk was last repaired in 2000 (although some sections near the plant have not been repaired since 1942, according to the Corps), and the tail in 1976. In the 100 years since the jetty was built, the Corps, on average, has performed major rehab every 25 years.

According to the Army Corps’ project plan, work will “repair side slopes that have failed due to armor stone displacement and foundation failure” and the Corps will remedy areas that “have sustained the most damage including areas where wave overtopping has reduced crest height” of the jetty.

Blauvelt said that might involve creation of new roads to access the jetty, as well as accumulation of debris like felled trees — both of which would be removed by the Corps before the end of the project.

All physical work will be completed through the Corps. Almost $17 million in federal funding is allocated to the project, including $11 million from the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and $6 million from general fund devotions. Martin said the city, including late Mayor Crystal Dingler, had been working on the project for “quite some time” with U.S. Rep. Derek Kilmer and there were “a lot of hurdles we went through.”

“This is a huge project, I really do appreciate the port and all the work that they’ve done working with Ocean Shores in order to get this thing done,” Martin said.

While the jetty protects Ocean Shores from battering waves and shifting sands, its main purpose — along with its twin, the South Jetty in Westport, which together make up the Grays Harbor Federal Navigation Project — is to ensure ships can safely enter the harbor. The Corps constantly dredges and deepens the harbor’s main channel, while the jetties prevent sand from refilling it, and, by pinching the mouth of the harbor bar, increase velocity of ocean currents, naturally scouring the ocean bottom.

As the project’s local sponsor, the port’s primary interest is to maintain navigation routes to the port, said Kayla Dunlap, spokesperson for the Port of Grays Harbor.

Construction will take place over two full construction seasons for a total work period of 30 months. Some work will take place in the water, which can only take place from July 15 to Feb. 14 of any year.

After repairs, the jetty should be viable for another 25 years, according to the Corps.

Contact reporter Clayton Franke at 406-552-3917 or clayton.franke@thedailyworld.com.