SWAMPSCOTT — The Conservation Commission voted unanimously to approve a six-month extension for the town’s seawall repair project at its meeting Monday afternoon.
In an effort to fix the years of natural damage to Swampscott’s seawall, specifically focused on structural issues caused by a large 2018 nor’easter, the town has allocated approximately $4 million toward a three-year seawall repair project since October 2020.
Town-hired contractors from the concrete company X-Treme Shotcrete have already completed work from the Lynn-Swampscott Town Line to the intersection at Monument Avenue. Department of Public Works Director Gino Cresta said the Town has already put out a Request for Proposals to complete the project by repairing a portion of the wall that runs from the Monument Avenue Intersection to the Mission on the Bay restaurant on Humphrey Street, which sits on a privately-owned wall.
Cresta said that while the newly-repaired portions of the seawall had seen more than a foot of recession prior to the start of the project, the remaining portion of the wall is in better shape.
“It’s (the remaining portion of wall repairs) more staying ahead of the work. We’re working on it now before the wall even starts to deteriorate, ” Cresta said. “Prior to us doing this work, we could have had a catastrophic failure if we didn’t make the repairs. You could stick your arm in the side of that wall before we started making the repairs.”
Cresta added that contractors are expected to begin work on the final wall portion in the next two or three weeks at a cost of approximately $400,000 and that the project should be completed by the end of the year. He said FEMA will reimburse the town for roughly $540,000 of the project’s total cost.
The town, Cresta said, has made significant progress on fortifying its coastal barrier in the last three years. The King’s Beach Seawall, he said, stands as the town’s first line of defense in the event of a coastal flood.
“Right now, the wall is great, I’d say a 9.5 out of 10,” Cresta said.“Our concern when we started was if we had lost that wall, or a portion of it, we would have lost the sidewalk and possibly the roadway behind it.”
