WARRENTON — City officials are investing nearly $100,000 to design a bank-stabilization project at Seafarers’ Park.

For the last several years, erosion has claimed portions of the park’s shoreline, cutting into its banks near the Hammond Marina. Among the biggest drivers for the issue are wave action, king tides and winter storms, said City Manager Esther Moberg.

City commissioners have also expressed concerns over damage to pile dikes that are intended to direct flows and reduce erosion along the river.

That reality has required the landowners to stabilize shoreline properties every several years.

“It is an ongoing effort where if you don’t refresh the revetment, if you don’t redo the shoreline, over time you will lose the shoreline to the water action and the storms,” Moberg said.

In 2023, a winter storm caused significant damage to the shoreline at Seafarers’ Park. In response, the city sought quotes from three firms to design a bank stabilization project, and one firm — North Coast Civil Design, LLC — came back with a proposal. City commissioners approved a roughly $95,000 contract with the firm for an initial design phase last month.

Moberg said the goal is to complete the design by early summer so the city can go out to bid for construction and complete the project by the fall, before the next winter storm season. The city has an additional $250,000 available in its budget for construction.

Construction will likely involve placing revetment rock along the shoreline. The initial work will be contained to the paved viewpoint at the park, but Moberg hopes to add to that work as time and funding allows.

“That’s not going to capture everything that’s eroded, so the next year, there will most likely be another phase to this project,” she said. “So we will keep going on this until we have re-shored up all of the shoreline that has eroded that is city property.”

She added that the hope in the next few years is to shift toward working preemptively to help prevent future erosion.

“My goal right now for the city going forward is to repair what has been damaged, but then we need to look at what we need to shore up as well,” Moberg said.