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Officials break ground on $1.4M seawall project


TIM KELLY PHOTO Subi Chakraborti, state DOT regional director; Eugene Brickman, deputy chief of the Army Corps of Engineers regional planning division, Congressman Tim Bishop and contractor Bob Terry of Riverhead during Friday's Orient road construction groundbreaking.


No disruption in traffic is expected when a Riverhead construction company begins work on a $1.4 million extension of the seawall on the Route 25 causeway linking East Marion and Orient, officials said at a project groundbreaking Friday afternoon.
The 350-foot addition at the eastern end of the half-mile rock and concrete barrier that has stood on the edge of Orient Harbor since the 1920s is designed to solve chronic erosion threatening Route 25, the only road connecting Orient to the rest of Southold. The project, a joint effort of the Army Corps of Engineers and the state Department of Transportation, is scheduled to be finished by the spring. The Terry Construction company of Riverhead is the contractor.
Congressman Tim Bishop said the project would not have been possible without the $421,000 grant obtained through the federal stimulus program.