Ice breaking to assist in ongoing Black River seawall construction begins
Work to rehabilitate the Black River seawall by the Zebra Bar in downtown Port Huron is well underway, and ice-breaking is set to begin today to assist the contractor.
City Manager James Freed said the project, which also includes reconstructing much of the adjacent West Quay Street parking lot, is roughly 45 feet into replacing a 105-foot seawall.
Construction was bid out through DTE Energy under an agreement OK’d by city officials in 2021. City Engineering Manager Angela McKinstry said the city’s share of the costs for seawall work was more than $900,000 and $280,000 for the parking lot.
Although originally pegged to wrap up within a couple of weeks, she said work has faced delays due to obstructions with the ice.
According to the release, ice-breaking operations are expected to end on Feb. 4. There will be open water on the Black River from the Seventh Street Bridge to the St. Clair River.
Due to separate material delays “in getting the steel, the sheet piling in,” McKinstry said, “I’m not sure what the timeline is” for seawall work to wrap up.
Reconstruction in that area overall was expected to be complete later this year, she said, with crews “done and out of there by the end of June.”
Similar to its reconstruction of the Majestic parking lot downtown, DTE is targeting West Quay as part of excavation activities on the lot’s eastern half to clean up underground contaminants left behind from a gas and electric outfit the energy company absorbed a century ago.
Freed said previously parts of the seawall included in the DTE agreement were 40 years old.
Instability in infrastructure along the seawall has also resulted in temporarily closing the walkway along the river and behind the Zebra in the past.
For more information, contact the city’s department of public works at (810) 984-9730.
Contact Jackie Smith at (810) 989-6270 or jssmith@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter @Jackie20Smith.
This article originally appeared on Port Huron Times Herald: Ice breaking to assist in ongoing Black River seawall work begins
