By Lisa ZahnerINDIAN RIVER COUNTY — The Board of County Commissioners Tuesday disregarded the recommendation of its beaches advisory panel to go with sand-pumping — and also decided to not go with the lowest local bidder — and wound up picking a Fort Pierce construction company to truck in sand to renourish a lengthy stretch of eroded beach on the barrier island. After listening to more than 50 people speak about being out of work, and getting assurance that the local state legislative delegation would help push through environmental permitting of trucked-in sand, the County Commission voted 4-to-0 to award the beach renourishment project to Ranger Construction.The irony came in the fact that Brian Davis, brother of County Commissioner Wesley Davis and the sand mine owner who would have provided material to a Sebastian-based sand-trucking company that was the low bidder, paid nearly $6,000 to some 100 unemployed people who waved signs and told their stories at the meeting in an effort to get the Commission to choose sand-trucking over sand-pumping. In the end, Davis’ efforts got the contract awarded to an area sand-trucking company, but the sand will come from a competitor instead of his own company.Jimmy Carson was one of the 50 or so people who spoke at the meeting in favor of awarding the contract to a local company. He was laid off from his construction job with Rinker in 2004, worked at a packing house for a couple of years and is now unemployed again. He has one unemployment check remaining to claim and is not sure what he’ll do after that.”We need jobs here bad,” said Carson. “A lot of people are leaving and going to Georgia or North Carolina where they have family.” Carson said the $65 he earned by coming to the meeting will put gas in his car, which he will use to drive around and fill out more job applications.But even though the bid submitted by the Davis group was significantly lower, the Commission picked Ranger — which has a proven track record of successfully completing beach sand projects in St. Lucie County — to truck sand to renourish the 6.5-mile stretch from Treasure Shores Park south to the northern end of John’s Island.This decision went against the Sept. 3 recommendation of the Beaches and Shores Preservation Advisory Committee, which had recommended selection of Great Lakes Dredging as the quickest way to get the project done. Great Lakes pumped sand onto several other stretches of barrier island beach in 2007.In May, commissioners opened up the bidding to providers of trucked-in sand, but having the job open to both offshore and upland sand providers has complicated the permitting process as it is virtually unheard of in Florida. But in the end, the commissioners decided it was worth the extra time that will be required for permitting the trucking-in of sand to keep the $9 million contract local. The hope is that the additional permitting will only take an extra 30 to 60 days.
