The work to get rid of a big gravel bar at Albany’s Takena Landing boat ramp on the Willamette River was going on this morning, as you can see in the video.
The city had contracted with R.L. Reimers Co. to do the heavy lifting required. Under a permit from the state, the job had to be completed by Sept. 29.
As it turned out, the gravel should be gone by the end of Friday. The crew started Wednesday, building a temporary coffer dam to slow the river current, and surrounding the work site with a barrier to contain sediment. This morning they were taking out the huge bags of rock making up the dam as they were excavating the gravel bar itself.
People from the city were keeping an eye on the work and recording the work with a drone. As for me, not having a drone, I hoofed it up the normally closed sidewalk on the east side of the Ellsworth Street bridge to get some pictures from above the gravel operation. As you can see, I managed it without dropping my phone into the river below. (hh)
Working to lift out sections of the dam made up of sacks filled with rocks.
At that speed they might want to get a permit until Sept 29th 2020.
Thank you HH for your accounts in July and August of this year regarding hazardous conditions at Takena Landing. I believe your reporting brought this problem to the attention of everyone who has a stake in recreational and professional safety on the Willamette River in the Albany area. I spoke to a gentleman at the job site yesterday regarding my awareness and concern about this project and his immediate reply was “Are you reading Hasso?”.
Great job!
Where are they putting the rock being removed?
The city told me Reimers planned to take the material to a gravel pit.
There’s a certain irony in taking gravel back to a gravel pit.
More info: The Reimers company is taking the gravel excavated from the river to a Knife River gravel pit. The gravel is considered “contaminated” because it comes from a boat ramp. Eventually it may be cleaned and sold or ground up to become aggregate in concrete mix.
Given the contractor needed to build a Coffer dam around the affected gravel bank in order to remove the excess, would it not have been wise to have those Safety signs in place around the backhoe – the signs reading, “Futility Work Ahead.”
The presence of the Coffer dam points to what seems inevitable: the reappearance of the gravel bar sometime after the Coffer dam is removed.
JJ
I can think of 2 purposes for the dam that have no connection to recurrence. 1. It allows a stable, flow-free work-zone.
2. It is a containment for fine material that would plume downriver.
Sometimes, stuff just happens