Norfolk golf course gets sandbag fix after Irene

NORFOLK

The city has completed the first part of an estimated yearlong, $2.5 million renovation to Lambert's Point Golf Club, where sections along the Elizabeth River split open during Hurricane Irene and released buried garbage into the environment.

The public course, home to the Old Dominion University golf teams, was built atop a city landfill that closed in 1980. Trash and debris had been tossed in the dump for more than 50 years, mostly before laws existed governing such waste sites.

In the past month, workers have covered exposed areas along two waterfront holes - Nos. 6 and 7 - with black plastic liners and sandbags as a temporary fix. It was here that wind, rain and heavy surf from the August hurricane eroded shoreline slopes and exposed mounds of antique trash buried in the ground.

A permanent repair is being designed by an engineering firm, Moffatt & Nichol, to consist mostly of big boulders and rocks - and perhaps some wetland grasses - that should armor the shore against future storm damage.

Construction is expected to begin in September or October, assuming the City Council approves necessary funding, said Chris Chambers, a design engineer for the Norfolk Public Works Department, who is overseeing the project.

City officials are not sure how much trash escaped into the river during and after Irene. They took action in October after photos from the ODU student newspaper, the Mace & Crown, showed exposed garbage flapping in the wind along the western edges of the course.

State environmental regulators then got involved and required all exposed areas to be patched and protected from future storms, citing health and environmental concerns that the site might otherwise be classified as "an open dump."

"We saw mostly garbage bags and rags, household stuff," Chambers said during a site tour aboard golf carts Tuesday. "Thank goodness we didn't see any barrels" or other evidence of hazardous wastes within the old landfill.

Chambers and other officials said Lambert's Point did not close to golfers during work on the temporary cap, nor do they expect any shutdowns when permanent repairs are implemented in the fall. That work will be done mostly from barges on the water's edge and will require state and federal permits.

The temporary fix shown off Tuesday cost about $180,000, Chambers said, but the overall project should total about $2.5 million. That will include money for shoreline bolstering behind hole No. 8, where some wetland planting is being considered in conjunction with a nearby marsh-creation project next to the ODU Sailing Center.

The city had to patch a section of the old landfill in 1990, before the course was built but where the fifth green now is located, where erosion similarly had exposed trash after years of wear and tear.

Chambers oversaw that project, too. A golfer himself, Chambers said he had hoped the course would remain whole after it finally opened in 2005, but "you never know, this frontage area gets hit pretty hard by the river during storms."

During Irene, saltwater from waves and storm surge killed sections of greens on three waterfront holes. The greens, like the eroded shoreline, are recovering.

Scott Harper, 757-446-2340, scott.harper@pilotonline.com