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worked ahead of the pile driving operation
to maintain the right-of-way.
“In this area, you can’t get any more of
an easement or you’ll be in someone’s living
room,” said Serpe with a laugh. The wall was
designed to follow the easement between
the shoreline and the dunes, while adhering
to residential property line setbacks,
and tying into the future beachfill project.
This required close coordination with the
USACE and the NJDEP.
Working in the sand
Working on the beach presents unusual
challenges, including wear and tear on the
equipment. While gravity returns much of
the sand to the beach, it sticks to lubricated
areas such as joints and within the tracks of
the pile drivers. The resulting friction can be
damaging, according to ECA’s Raysik, who
works to eliminate any downtime associated
with the RTG pile drivers. The salty air can
also increase corrosion. Another challenge
is the constant clogging of air filters by airborne
sand, which reduces the performance
of the equipment. EIC’s full-time maintenance
crew fought this battle by blowing
them out bi-weekly.
Mobility was the next challenge, since
wheels and tracks slide in soft sand. EIC
increased traction along the work corridor
with a geotextile fabric base topped off with
crushed stone.
“It’s an incredible amount of effort just
to get the steel where you need to install it,”
said Serpe. He attributes much of the credit
to EIC’s skilled operators. The steel sheets
– 45-foot-long by 4.9-foot-wide – weigh
7,000 pounds. Each pile was dragged by a
bulldozer from a nearby staging area to its
final destination.
The geotechnical aspect of this project
is intriguing. The surface layer is fine beach
sand, below which is a layer of black sand,
clay and an additional layer of fine sand.
“It’s all about friction,” Himborg said,
adding that the high water table is helpful.
“When you come to a water-saturated
area, it acts like a lubricant and facilitates
the penetration process.” The steel sheets
essentially displace the sand as they are
driven.
The RTG pile drivers feature an active
push system, according to Himborg, which
allows the machine to plow through dense
materials such as clay. While EIC occasionally
encountered clay at the tip elevation,
the pile drivers were met with little
resistance. Drive time hovered between
two and three minutes most of the time.
He describes the situation as “putting the
brakes on the hammer” when the sheet
breaks through the clay below and needs to
be stopped by the rig. Serpe indicates that
the power of the RTGs was the defining
factor in punching through the heavy layer
of clay beneath the beach.
Invisible protection
EIC will not only deliver protection to the
barrier island of Mantoloking, but the finished
project will restore the beach to its
original appearance. This is the first phase
of a $300-million USACE beachfill project
that will build up dunes, a berm and
extend the beach by 200 feet between the
Manasquan and Barnegat Inlets.
When all is said and done, Mantoloking
will return to the bucolic island atmosphere
that residents have traditionally enjoyed.
But it will be stronger. This wall of steel will
be a distant memory, disguised by dunes.
“You’re never going to see this wall,”
said Serpe, “and it’s the last line of defense,
if the big storm ever comes again.”
It seems like a small price to pay. t
PROJECT SPOTLIGHT
108 | QUARTER 1 2015
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