Coastal Infrastructural Resilience Project Planning Underway

DULUTH, Minn. – The City of Duluth and Saint Louis County are beginning the planning process for projects that would limit the erosion impact along parts of the Twin Ports region shorelines.

They are using a $258,000 grant from FEMA to look at how to best handle the matter on the bayside of Park Point, and the North Shore between Brighton Beach and Knife River.

City of Duluth Construction Project Supervisor Mike LeBeau says the funding will take more of a mitigation approach when it comes to erosion, rather than waiting to repair damage along shorelines once it has occurred.  “It’s based on the understanding that it’s much cheaper and better to look for potential damage before it happens, and to make adjustments to things, how things are done, where things are build, how they are built before they get damage by storms, by waves, by wind, by whatever.”

The project, which will take several years, will consider which parts of these shorelines will get attention first.  All options for how to save infrastructure will be considered, with hope that action will be taken once a plan is in place and additional federal funding is available.

“They will include where there is physical space,” says LeBeau, “and it make sense for other reasons to retreat the infrastructure of the road, the parking area, whatever, back from the edge, so that it is not threatened for at least a number of year.  In other places where there isn’t room, we have to resort to physical construction methods to reinforce the shoreline and hold off the erosion.”

Wednesday is the first of three virtual meetings to present the project to the public.  Additional information about Duluth Coastal Infrastructure Resilience can be found here.