Reclaiming its beach access

The Port Washington Street Department removed truckloads of soggy clay from the entrance to the city’s north beach late last week, but the bluff remained unstable so the north beach remained off limits over the holiday weekend.

City crews removed more of the waterlogged clay Tuesday, and an inspection of the bluff was to be conducted Wednesday. If the bluff is deemed stable enough, Public Works Director Rob Vanden Noven said, the beach was expected to reopen later that day.

The problem, he said, is that when the clay and debris was removed last week it uncovered more unstable, wet soils on the the bluff.

Engineers with Miller Engineering and Scientists, the city’s geotechnical consultant for the bluff, who had created a grading plan for the city to follow, said the risk to anyone walking below was too great for the city to reopen the beach, Vanden Noven said.

“They said there was still too great a chance of the bluff slumping,” Vanden Noven said. “They recommended removing additional soils before we reopened the beach.”

The Street Department crew doesn’t work on Fridays, so the beach was closed with barricades and signage for the holiday weekend.

On Tuesday, the city removed those additional soils.

Vanden Noven said that even though the city didn’t formally open the beach,  people still used the path to access the north beach at their own risk.

“Even when the entryway was completely blocked, people were still going over the rocks to get to the beach,” he said.

The beach had been closed since mid-April, when heavy rains saturated the city and caused a large section of the north bluff to collapse, blocking the beach.

That same collapse forced the city to close the northbound road through Upper Lake Park. The collapse brought the road within nine feet of the bluff’s edge, and while it wasn’t undermined, officials said enough erosion occurred to raise safety concerns.

The city moved that portion of the roadway to the west and reopened it in early May.

Bluff erosion has been a continuing issue for the city, caused in large part by water in the sand seams in the bluff. The moist sand acts as a lubricant, making the bluff prone to slumping.

The city has given the green light to an initial phase of a stabilization project — installing drains along the bluff to help remove water from the sand seams, Vanden Noven noted, but that work isn’t slated to be done until summer.

Eventually the city hopes to cut back the bluff to create a more stable slope and construct a revetment along the base of the bluff to protect it from erosion caused by waves. A beach nourishment program, in which sand is added to the beach, is also recommended to improve the quality of the beach and increase its width.