Barge ran aground in Virginia Beach as planned

VIRGINIA BEACH

The barge ran aground on the beach at 61st Street, and that was exactly the idea.

Instead of using trucks, the contractor building an Oceanfront stormwater outfall pipe brought equipment and materials from Baltimore to Virginia Beach by water.

The plan: ram the 210-foot-long barge loaded with two cranes and 142 pieces of interlocking steel - just shy of 1 million pounds total - into the sloping beach at the exact point where workers in bulldozers had built a giant sand ramp to meet it.

And it almost went off like a child's Tonka toy sandbox fantasy. Except for the tide, which was a little low Monday afternoon. The barge, pushed by a shallow draft tugboat, got stuck in the surf and came up about 20 feet short from the waterline.

"Bring it around and give it some horsepower," a worker with McClean Contracting Co. said into his radio.

The tug yanked the barge back for another shot. Still short but close enough that a crane could start unloading metal.

Perhaps getting that weight off would allow the barge to float closer so they could drive the cranes off.

"It's a little anticlimactic," said Dan Adams, a city engineer overseeing the operation. "I thought it was going to hit the beach and they'd walk right off."

The $16.4 million project, which some North End residents are trying to stop in court, is designed to pump stormwater about 1,500 feet into the ocean.

As the sun set Monday, it was clear it was going to be a late night unloading. There was some good news, though. The tide was coming in and a nearly full moon would soon rise.

Aaron Applegate, (757) 222-5122, aaron.applegate@pilotonline.com