LORAIN — An annual tendency for sand to build up between the breakwall and beach at Lakeview Park can lead to a situation akin to the parting of the Red Sea.
“A couple of weeks ago, we looked out there and you could almost literally walk all the way from the beach to the breakwall,” Metro Parks Director Jim Ziemnik said. “We don’t want people doing that. If the sand gets too built up, it becomes a safety issue.”
Which is why a sizable excavator from
Herk Excavating in Vermilion has been at work all week gradually lowering sand levels 12 to 18 inches in areas near the center of each of the three break wall sections where sand built up over the spring and summer months.
“The areas where the sand is higher, where it gets deposited and creates little bridges or runways to the beach, tend to be in the center of each breakwall,” Ziemnik said.
The park district typically performs this maintenance work every couple of years.
The excavator scoops the built-up sand and returns it to the beach.
“We’ve used a bulldozer in years past, but it doesn’t have the reach this machine does,” Ziemnik said. “This speeds up the process and minimizes the number of times we have to dig and move sand.”
The sand removal has been done in the past by Metro Parks personnel, but that required rental of a machine and paying transportation costs to get it to the beach.
“When we weigh the most cost-effective way to do it including the time it takes, and the money spent, it was a lot cheaper to have them do this one,” Ziemnik said.
Besides, the job benefitted Herk as well, whose personnel told Metro Parks officials they could use a machine that might otherwise be sitting idle, and keep an operator working, too.
The work cost the park district just over $4,000, Ziemnik said.
Contact Steve Fogarty at 329-7146 or sfogarty@chroniclet.com.
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