BREVARD COUNTY, Fla. — Part of the seawall near Satellite Beach City Hall on Cassia Boulevard started collapsing around Halloween and now the city council is considering waiving the city’s procurement policy to conduct an emergency repair.

After being incorporated as a city more than 60 years ago in 1957, some of the infrastructure put in place around that time in Satellite Beach is starting to show its age and the crumbling seawall is one of them.

During its regular city council meeting on Wednesday, council members will vote to approve an emergency repair to part of the seawall just down the road from city hall on Cassia Boulevard.

“It’s a simple repair. The fact that it collapsed the way it did, made it a bit of an emergency,” said Courtney Barker, the city manager for Satellite Beach. “So, we’re going that emergency route. We’re doing that because we don’t want it to get worse.” 

Barker said it became clear that the wall would need replacing back in April, but there were not substantial issues at the time. But around late October, part of the wall collapsed and a large chunk of dirt between the wall and the sidewalk eroded as well. 

“The Cassia seawall is collapsing and it looks like it could start collapsing the sidewalk and that becomes a safety issue,” Barker said. “So, we want to get to it before it gets to that point.” 

Even for an emergency repair, like the wall on Cassia Boulevard, the city still needs to get three quotes on the project. The difference with the emergency selection is the overall timeline.

Normally, council members would put out the bid on Demand Star for a few weeks to give people time to look at it and submit bids. The process requires several contracts and two separate council meetings to go through the motions.

“That’s normally a three-, four-month process and an emergency bid is one council meeting,” Barker said. “We call three people that we know do that work and say, ‘Hey, can you come out here and give us a quote.’ So, it takes a lot less time.”

In the agenda packet for Wednesday’s meeting, it notes that the Public Works Department received a low bid from Reese Enterprises Inc. for $115,665.15.

The city is looking at other seawalls that may need repair as well. The retaining wall near the gazebo at city hall will be assessed for repair in 2022. 

“We can see some maintenance cracking, stuff like that. And because we can see that, we know that it’s coming and we can program that to get to that before it become an emergency,” Barker said.

In the new year, they will be looking at other seawalls, especially those that have outfalls to see if they need any work. An outfall is somewhere a storm pipe has running through it or under it.