PLUM ISLAND — It didn't take long, and it didn't cost much.
Workers from a Lexington erosion-control firm called Netco made emergency repairs yesterday to a system of giant sandbags that is protecting a section of severely eroded beach near Plum Island Center.
Newbury Conservation Agent Doug Packer said a gap between some sandbags and the dune behind them was filled yesterday morning by a Netco crew. He said the cost for the work would be about $600.
The barricade of giant sandbags, ranging in length from six to 27 feet, was built about a year ago to provide temporary protection to a 500-foot-long section of beach from Plum Island Center northward, where erosion is at its worst.
One house has been lost to erosion and several others threatened.
There was still no word yesterday, however, on whether the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will be able to proceed with a larger project to aid the island: dredging the Merrimack River channel and using the sand yielded by the operation to rebuild the beach.
The Army Corps received three bids for the dredging/beach nourishment project on Nov. 20. Only one price quote, $3.25 million by AIS Construction of Carpinteria, Calif., met the Army Corps budget guidelines for the project.
In reviewing AIS's qualifications, Army Corps officials said the equipment the company planned to use was too light for the job.
On Dec. 7, the chief of the Army Corps New England District Navigation Section, Edward O'Donnell, said he had spoken with an AIS representative on Dec. 4. He wrote in an e-mail message that the company was "still in the process of trying to obtain dredging equipment to do the work."
O'Donell wrote that he hoped to be able to make a firm decision by the middle of last week, a deadline that has since passed.
The Army Corps project estimate was $2.923 million. AIS's bid was 11.2 percent higher, but that was within the Army Corps guideline of no more than 25 percent over estimate.
The other two bids weren't even close: One was for $6.998 million, the other for nearly $10.2 million.
The Army Corps wants work to begin in early January so it can be finished by March 31. Construction work at the beach must cease before the April 1 start of the nesting season of the piping plover, a species of shorebird that is classified by the state and federal governments as threatened.
If AIS cannot do the work in that time frame, the earliest the work could be done would be next fall.
It was not immediately clear yesterday whether the project would need to be re-bid if it were delayed until fall.
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