Serving Gogebic, Iron and Ontonagon Counties
Serving Gogebic, Iron and Ontonagon Counties
By RICHARD JENKINS
Hurley — With the company already onsite working for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Iron County Board of Supervisors awarded the contract for its share of the Saxon Harbor marina’s dredging to Roen Salvage Tuesday.
The company — based in Sturgeon Bay, Wis. — was awarded the $2,779,533 contract to dredge approximately 21,100 cubic yards of sediment deposited in the portion of the marina the county is responsible for during the July 2016 storm that destroyed the harbor.
Along with the dredging, the contract includes repairs to the retaining wall around the basin, constructing the new boat landing, rebuilding the east boat launches, replacing the wood bumpers along the east wall of the marina and work on the marina’s center peninsula.
While the bids were higher than the engineering estimate of just under $2.2 million, Peterson said this was because the county was pushing a tight timeline for the project’s completion.
“That pre-cast concrete wall going around the basin, the contractors that make those pre-cast walls need lead time and those pre-cast sections need to cure. And we are asking for all this contract work we’re awarding today to be done by the middle of August,” Iron County Forester Eric Peterson said. “So the other thing that jacks our price up is our expedited timeframe to try and get this built; because we are on schedule still to have a complete marina by winter, so we have a done, finished marina by next spring.”
Around two-thirds of the contract’s cost is reimbursable through the Federal Emergency Management Agency, according to Peterson, with the rest paid for through a combination of grants and county funds. For the amounts covered by federal funds, FEMA will reimburse the county for 75 percent of the cost, with the county and the state of Wisconsin each paying the remaining 12.5 percent.
The contract was awarded contingent on FEMA approving several design changes, which Peterson expected to happen sometime next week.
Roen has been working at the harbor since May 17 on the portion of the dredging the Army Corps is responsible for.
