Additional movement of the bluff along Front Street late last week prompted Town of Coupeville officials to close off two blocks between Kinney and Gould streets over the weekend.
Mayor Molly Hughes said Tuesday that the additional movement occurred late Friday afternoon and town staff members closed the road because they couldn’t see the extent of what was going on.
This is the third slide in that area since 2013. The second occurred last month. All three are about a block apart from each other.
An engineering firm that inspected the same area after a slide in 2013 came out over the weekend to inspect the new activity.
Hughes said one of the same engineers from 2013 was able to come out and walk the area with her and explain how the bluff has changed in the last three years.
He basically reiterated everything the 2013 report stated, she said. “He said nothing was unexpected, that it’s an unstable bluff and it’s going to recede.”
The bluff has three basic problems: Stormwater runoff from the top of the bluff, tidal erosion from the bottom and part of the bluff consists of man-made fill.
The 2013 report said the bluff would have an average erosion of two inches per year, but that that’s not really how erosion happens, Hughes said. It’s not a steady, even sloughing.
“Nothing has happened for three years and then we get a winter like we’ve had,” she said.
Based on that assessment, Hughes said the town will continue on with its plan of moving the roadway and pedestrian path in, putting up a fence, restriping and working on stormwater runoff mitigation.
Staff were waiting for drier weather to install the fence, but Hughes said the engineer told them they didn’t need to wait.
“We’re going to order materials and get on that immediately,” she said.
There is already $13,500 budgeted for work on Front Street.
The engineer also said the town didn’t need to fence the entire road, just Gould to Kinney streets.
So that cuts the project in half, Hughes said.
The pedestrian pathway between Kinney and Gould, which is currently blocked off, will be decommissioned.
Hughes said the town will also get the stormwater issues dealt with this year as well. That requires hiring engineers, but work could potentially be completed by town staff.
