OBSERVER Photo by Jo Ward The retaining wall on Lake Erie in the city of Dunkirk will be getting repaired once FEMA funds are released. The project is expected to cost $950,000.

Dunkirk is about ready to begin fixing its retaining wall on Lake Erie, according to information recieved at a Department of Public Works meeting last week.

“(Federal Emergency Management Agency) sent an email recently saying that we can rebuild the wall the way that it was,” Director of Public Works Randy Woodbury said. “That’s not good enough. We want to add a little bit of enhancement to it and they knew that going in.”

Woodbury stated he’s been advocating for a $50,000 improvement to give extra strength to the wall to avoid this incident from happening again in the future.

“The entire project is $950,000 — $50,000 of that makes the wall three times stronger,” he said. “It’s only protected right now for horizontal strength, but the way it came apart was vertically so there was nothing to pin it together and there was nothing to pin it together from rotation. We’re going to maintain that horizontal and also add strength vertically to keep it from rotating.”

Woodbury expects the improvements to protect the wall in the future.

“Should we have another storm like that again, that level of storm (in October 2019) will not take the wall apart like it did.

“They realize that that’s a pretty good investment because who’s to say we won’t get another storm like that?” Woodbury stated. “I put all that together and I got an email just before this meeting saying thank you they’re close to chewing it out and giving us permission to go and once we do we have the contractors ready to go and there will be equipment down there the next day.”

Woodbury and the Department of Public Works plan to open up Lakefront Boulevard as a one-way street going west to east once work begins on the wall.