The Aquamarine Beach Harvester 12000 heads into the surf at Easton’s Beach, Newport, Friday morning, collecting the red seaweed that covers much of the beach.

The Providence Journal / Frieda Squires

NEWPORT — The engine roars and the City-by-the-Seaweed once again goes to war against a relentless ––and slimy — foe.

The city has a new weapon in its campaign to rid postcard-perfect Easton’s Beach of the reddish, smelly seaweed that has chronically plagued it. And it might even turn the seaweed from a bather’s nemesis into a farmer’s friend.

The steel contraption, all nine tons of it, thunders down the beach and then charges into the shallow water meeting the crimson enemy head-on. Then it turns and motors along the water’s edge, scooping algae into a 10-foot-wide opening and lifting it on board.

“See that? It’s coming up right now,” says operator Andrew Budihas Jr., as a conveyor belt lifts bits of seaweed out of the water and carries them into the belly of the beast.

Budihas is sitting atop a tall, stout vehicle that looks something like a Zamboni or a wheat combine. Its manufacturer calls it an “aquatic plant harvester,” as if it gathers something desirable instead of the stuff that disgusts bathers who find it in their swimsuits and traps beach-closing pollutants.

After years of trying to turn the tide in its crusade against seaweed, the city has purchased a machine that costs $320,000 and is unlike any other in the world. Aquamarine, a Canadian company that has made harvesters for lakes and reservoirs from Thailand to Tunisia, won the contract to design and build one for Newport.

The challenge? Aquamarine had never constructed a machine for a beach with heavy surf. Virtually all of its previous designs were floating models intended to be tied up at a dock or launched from a trailer. At Easton’s Beach, there are no docks and the surf would often be too formidable for a floating harvester to reach the shoreline.

What Newport needed was a vehicle that could be motored onto the beach and then driven into shallow water inside the surf line. Once there, it would gather seaweed before it could wash ashore. In recent years, the city intensified its efforts to mechanically rake up seaweed deposited along the mile-long expanse of sandy beach. But the tractor was restricted to times when the tides and crowds permitted and it still left seaweed in the water.

Meanwhile, the city, confronted by a citizen lawsuit over pollution at the beach and in Newport Harbor, had determined from studies that the seaweed acts as a pollution sponge. Contaminated runoff gets trapped in the shallows instead of rapidly dissipating into the ocean.

The consequence? Lost parking and concession revenues and a sullied reputation as the premier beach in the City-by-Sea, one with breathtaking views of the cliffs beneath the mansions of Bellevue Avenue, a spruced-up pavilion leased for weddings and waves large enough to regularly attract surfers.

“We know the technology works. It’s been used for years. The question is, ‘Is it worth $300,000 to remove the seaweed from the beach?’ I think the answer is yes,” says City Manager Edward F. Lavallee, who won the support of the City Council for the initiative. “It’s otherwise a beautiful beach. It plagues us pretty much the entire season. We don’t know of another solution.”

Engineers from Aquamarine visited Newport to study the density of the sand and the types of seaweed in the water (about five varieties). In the spring, nearly 1½ years after the city awarded the contract, the company delivered its custom solution to the unique demands of Easton’s Beach.

Then it promptly broke down.

A wheel bearing cracked under the weight of the vehicle as it moved down a ramp and onto the beach. It was out of commission for about a month until a redesigned part could be sent. Then another small part broke almost immediately. But once it was quickly replaced, training for its future operators resumed.

So one day in late June, Budihas sits atop the harvester with a joystick-like control in each hand as Rick Geier, an Aquamarine service technician, looks on.

“This is the first one we’ve done all stainless-steel,” says Geier, noting that it needed to be more resistant to corrosion than the company’s other harvesters, which have been designed for fresh water or brackish water. And, he adds, “This is the first land [based] harvester we’ve built.”

The bright-orange vehicle sits on two small tires and four huge ones — each nearly 4½ feet in diameter and 2½ feet thick. It stands nearly 15 feet tall, with a cab to protect the driver from the elements. Its front end is like a pivoting escalator. In the water, it can be lowered to just a few inches above the bottom, and it has a plastic conveyor belt for hauling up seaweed and holes to drain water. Separate conveyor belts carry it into the storage area, with a capacity of up to 12,000 pounds, and unload it from the vehicle. Its engine is diesel; the systems operate on hydraulics.

The seaweed has been pulverized by the surf into small pieces on this day and Budihas, feeling the force of the waves in nearly two feet of water, is having little luck picking up large quantities of it, unlike a previous day when the clumps were “like hairballs the size of basketballs.” After about half an hour, he has only a garbage can full of seaweed in the hopper, along with some litter and a dead skate.

In recent years, the seaweed collected from the beach had to go to the state Central Landfill in Johnston, for a fee, because it was mixed with so much sand and litter. But the city expects that the fresher, cleaner seaweed will be in great demand for use as compost and fertilizer. Earth Care Farm in Charlestown already has state approval to accept it, Lavallee says.

“Several farms on the island have expressed interest in it,” says Lavallee, adding, “No one has offered us money for it yet.”

There ought to be plenty to go around. The city plans to run the harvester in all kinds of weather — one reason for the cab over the driver — and even in darkness, which is why the city asked that it be equipped with lights. It won’t be used, however, when there are too many bathers at the beach.

The city stands to realize a return beyond clean beaches thanks to its contract with Aquamarine.

“We will receive a royalty if we are able to promote this for other people that have a surf beach,” Lavallee says.

rsalit@projo.com