Progress continues on the Long Beach Harbor

LONG BEACH, Miss. (WXXV)-The City of Long Beach will soon begin construction on the next phase of the Long Beach Harbor.

A private showing was held for city officials, stakeholders, and project team members, documenting an important milestone for the City of Long Beach, recently completing the southeastern bulkhead of the Long Beach Harbor.

With phase one of the harbor wrapping up, things are trending up for the City of Long Beach.

Alderman At Large Donald Frazer said, “It’s a long time coming. I mean, so we’re seeing the fruits pay off. We got the board and the mayor out here along with our construction crews and our engineers just getting update on our where we our with our new construction, not only the outer wall, but construction on the inner wall will begin in the next two weeks.”

Mayor George Bass says the main focus of this project is sustainability. “The main goal of this project here is to bring our harbor up to the strength that the other harbors here on the Coast have with the concrete walls, the concrete protection, the concrete piers, to do away with the repetitive damages we’ve had.”

The City of Long Beach is advancing with the inner bulkhead wall project. This initiative focuses on replacing the deteriorating break wall with a robust 10-inch concrete sheet pile wall, reinforced by 14′ x 14′ concrete piles.

The project also includes the construction of a new 8 to 10-foot-handicap accessible, wide pedestrian walkway extending southward from the harbor house, enhancing public access and shoreline protection.

Mayor Bass said, “Our efforts and my efforts as the mayor was to lead the city to make the decision to put this harbor back to where it is something that needs to be sustainable even to a Cat-5. If we could build this harbor where the water will rise up over our piers and then we get the overflow from the wave action, the hydraulics will be less in that water, especially if we go back over pilings and walkways, our destruction should be minimal like the other harbors here on the Coast. “

Frazer said,  “When we’re doing these updates, we’re having to look 10, 20 years into the future of bringing ourselves up to date where in the past we would’ve had to come back and cut concrete and redo those, we’re trying to look ahead and build it for the future.”