FAIRHOPE – Four months after Hurricane Zeta knocked out utilities to the Fairhope Pier, the facility is still without water, sewer and power after the one bid to restore services was much more than expected.
The Fairhope City Council voted Monday, Feb. 22, to reject the bid of $237,000 to restore utilities. Another bid opened Feb. 23 was also more than $200,000, Mayor Sherry Sullivan said. She said city officials will decide what action to take, but the city could reject that bid and negotiate the service.
At the Feb. 22 meeting, Public Works Director Richard Johnson said that while the pier received no major damage during Hurricane Sally, a stronger storm, in September, Hurricane Zeta in late October destroyed the utility pipes and lines that ran under the structure.
“It’s critical,” Johnson said. “We don’t have water or sewer at the bathrooms, so we don’t have public rest rooms. We don’t have lighting along the pier for the public and, of course, we don’t have the secondary services associated with the marina that’s out there as well.”
Johnson said the service must be restored, but that $237,000 for lines extending 435 feet was too expensive.
Council President Jack Burrell questioned spending large amounts on services that could be damaged by future hurricanes. He said that while the pier was damaged in the past by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, even a small storm, such as Zeta, showed that the services are vulnerable.
“If it failed in Zeta, I just don’t see any reason to spend a lot of money on that and I know you said it’s been simplified, to build something that’s going to fail again,” Burrell said. “That wasn’t Katrina. Katrina did a lot more damage.”
Johnson said plans called for the lines to be moved closer to the pier to keep the services farther from the water.
“All major utilities, the electric, sewer and water were all hanging below the deck level so when those waves came, there was nothing to break those waves,” Johnson said. “They were hitting those utilities that were hanging down and broke them all off.”
He said that if the lines are moved closer to the pier, the services must be placed so someone on the deck cannot tamper with the pipes and wires.
“That was the basis for that decision is, one, getting it out of the weather, having it protected from people who, even though there’s a rail there, you don’t want somebody to be able to mess with something that would be detrimental if they did and to have it be clean, neat and maintainable,” he said.
Three wooden piers owned by the city were also damaged or destroyed during Zeta.
A pier north of the municipal pier was destroyed. Another south of that had piers uplifted on its north side. The pier at Pecan Avenue also had some pilings that will have to be reset, Johnson said.
