DAPHNE, Ala. — On Tuesday, the City Council voted 7-0 to authorize legal action against Thompson Engineering for what city leaders called errors and omissions at the May Day Park boat ramp. The work done by the engineering company was not to the city’s satisfaction, and Public Works Director Richard Johnson said legal action appeared to be necessary.

The council authorized the city attorney to issue a letter of demand to the company to ask it to reevaluate the design, prepare a plan to fix the problem and rebuild or replace the ramp at Thompson’s expense.

“We invested a lot of money in this project and we are just not satisfied with it,” Councilman Bailey Yelding said.

Johnson said the city commissioned the new boat ramp to address concerns with the previous structure, but the new ramp has the same problems.

“The key most important issue (was) that the structures there were causing an interference with the natural migration of sand from the south to the north and the north to the south … there were issues with starvation of sand from neighboring property,” Johnson said.

“At the end of the day, we have a product that does not meet the objective of the design. The two objectives were that there would be no intrusion to the movement of sand and that we would have a serviceable boat ramp. The new structure collects sand faster than the old structure and it is not usable.”

During a recent Public Works Committee meeting, Johnson brought up the issue. He asked the city council to approve one of two options. The options, he said, included instructing the city attorney, Jay Ross, to initiate formal contact with Thompson Engineering. Johnson said the possibilities were to ask the company to reevaluate the design, prepare a remediation plan and fix the ramp at its expense since the original design failed, or to instruct Ross to issue a letter of demand. The council approved the latter.

Johnson said he already sent letters to Thompson Engineering requesting that it start the process to fix the project’s deficiencies but he has not received a response. Johnson also said that the ramp is not currently usable because it is choked with accumulated sand.

In a letter to the council, Johnson said, “Today we have a very expensive new ramp that suffers the same condition as the one it replaced; sand entrapment and starvation of adjacent shoreline.

“The reason the city initiated the process in the first place was to alleviate the condition to bring us into compliance with federal and state coastal regulations.”

Johnson said he was seeking legal action because he had exhausted the options open to him.

“We have gone every route possible trying the polite way to get a response from the design firm and we are asking for legal action now,” Johnson said.