BRADENTON BEACH – The aging wooden jetty at the southernmost end of Coquina Beach is scheduled to be refurbished next spring and extended back to its original length.
The jetty, which extends into the Gulf of Mexico at Longboat Pass, was built in the 1950s and is made of squares of timber that are filled with rocks, according to Manatee County Parks and Natural Resources Department Director Charlie Hunsicker.
“The structure is about 70 years old and it looks sort of like an old railroad bridge. The waves have been hitting this structure of 70 years and it’s finally taking its toll on the last 40-50 feet. Some of the wood is breaking apart and the fasteners and bolts are rusting out. Some of those rocks are now spewed on the bottom of the Gulf,” Hunsicker said. The iconic jetty will be restored to its original length, around 30 feet, he added.
“The jetty was intended to hold the Coquina Beach sand from going into Longboat Pass and it did its job for the longest time, but it started to get a little leaky. So, about eight years ago, we experimented with putting in a tube filled with sand and laid it against the north side of the jetty. It’s like a hot dog filled with sand. This tube stopped the movement of sand that would have gone through the leaky part of the jetty. If this tube did its job, we could observe that the pass wasn’t filling in as fast as it had been. It worked. The tube was only intended to be there for three years, but it’s hung in there ever since,” Hunsicker explained.
“Now we’re going to replace it (the tube) with a permanent and impervious sheet pile wall that will be driven down into the sand at the same elevation as the rock jetty. A sheet pile wall is a steel wall that’s driven into the ground. When we put in the sheet pile wall against the existing structure, that will replace the tube of sand, and we are going to replace the broken-up pieces at the western end of the jetty. There’s not going to be a wall there that you can’t see around, nothing like that. The top of the jetty will stand about three feet above the sand,” Hunsicker said.
