Port of Orange Resiliency Design Alternatives

Bounded by the Sabine River to the north and east, and wetlands to the south and west, the Port of Orange’s Alabama Street terminal faces a challenge. Amid periods of high rainfall and storm tides, wetlands runoff overtops the facility and river tidal flow renders its road impassible. And a recently constructed storage yard has settled and cracked. To provide barge access along the wharf, the Port needs a solution.

The Port is considering widening and raising the grade of Alabama Street by five feet, and a pile-supported roadway is in preliminary design. Several options to render the storage yard and wharf operational are also being evaluated. Located at the south end of the Port, the Transmodal Marine Yard (TMY) exhibited cracking in the 78,000 sf reinforced concrete storage yard slab. Remediation of the TMY area will require the replacement of the failed section and underpinning the remainder of the slab, or complete replacement of the existing slab. Replacing the existing slab would require either preloading the area with a surcharge fill or designing a pile-supported slab. To make the wharf accessible to ships, the river can be dredged to 20 feet as originally planned, or the wharf can be extended into the Sabine River.

As part of the Port’s team of consultants, Schnabel is providing geotechnical services and assisting in the evaluation of these various alternatives. Our scope of services includes both land and water test borings, dilatometer testing, soil laboratory testing, recommendations for deep foundations, settlement evaluations considering surcharge fill and wick drains, and slope stability analysis.

^{Photo: © Port of Orange}