CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCSC) - The seawall at the Battery in downtown Charleston could soon be going under construction.
On Monday, the city’s public works and utilities committee is considering awarding a contract to a construction company which will be in charge of the almost $11 million repairs.
“They’ll be going in, taking the existing seawall, reconstructing and raising it to an elevation of what the high battery is now," Stormwater Management Director Matthew Fountain said. “The idea is to build roughly where the Coast Guard station is down the entire south end of the peninsula back where the high battery sits."
The first phase of the project focuses on the seawall near the Coast Guard station on Tradd Street.
The construction during this phase would elevate and repair the wall for about one thousand feet.
“It’s a one year construction project, so we’d expect to see mobilization and equipment on site early 2020, and that project completely finished by the end of 2020," Fountain said.
After that, four more phases would need to be completed to repair and elevate the whole wall.
The estimated cost of the entire project is $64 million.
“The low Battery is not in great condition. We had done an original assessment where they had shown there are some structural issues with it," Fountain said. “There’s concern that it would collapse over time.”
The project to elevate and repair the whole seawall at the Battery could take up to 10 years to complete.
“This is an opportunity to say,'We need to fix the wall. We know we have problems with sea level rise and storm surge, let’s put the two projects together.' And since we’re gonna fix it, let’s rebuild it at a higher elevation while we fix it,” Fountain said.
Copyright 2019 WCSC. All rights reserved.