Overview
The Ballard team was selected to construct a warm water manatee refuge, remove the old heating area, and install a horseshoe crab deterrent wall at the Cape Canaveral Plant.

Scope of Work
The work required driving over 700 linear feet of sheet pile along an existing concrete jetty to construct the new heating area boundary. With the sizable, protected manatee community in the area, a manatee-safe way to dredge the material was developed to satisfy the water quality requirements for Florida Power & Light (FPL), Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) and United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE). Commercial divers used six-inch pumps to hand dredge 4,000 cubic yards of material into geo-tubes staged in a lined dredge material management area that was designed and built for this purpose.

Innovative Solutions
Strict water quality and biological monitoring was conducted and documented each day dredging operations were conducted. To heat the water for the new warm water refuge, the team installed over 1,000 linear feet of twenty-inch HDPE pipe and 500 feet of sixteen-inch HDPE pipe by trenching over the land and then installing in the water to connect the intake and discharge to the existing pumps and heaters.

To prevent horseshoe crabs from entering the intake, 400 linear feet of sheet pile was driven at a ten-degree batter across the intake channel. The sheet pile had to be driven underwater with commercial divers while the plant was operating, and then cut off at the proper elevation using underwater cut-off saws. To prevent horseshoe crabs from over-topping the wall, a stainless-steel cap with a deflector was installed at the top of the underwater sheet pile wall, which matched the contour of the intake channel.

Results
After successfully testing the new manatee heating area, Ballard removed the old manatee heating area, which consisted of 700 linear feet of sheet pile, warm water discharge and the intake structure.