Posted on March 1, 2019
MIKE SPRINGER/Staff file photo/The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will use a $6 million grant to dredge shallow parts of the Annisquam River and the Blynman Canal. A hundred moorings in the river will need to be moved.
Gloucester will not pay any of the costs for the federal dredging of the Annisquam River in the fall, but the city must oversee the removal of more than 100 moorings from the river so work can progress unimpeded.
Gloucester Harbormaster T. J. Ciarametaro said the city and federal contractors have not yet identified which moorings must be removed during the extraction of about 140,000 cubic yards of sand and gravel from about 20 acres of the river’s 8-foot deep “Mean Lower Low Water” federal channel and anchorage.
“Mooring permit holders will receive notices and will have the opportunity to remove their moorings,” Ciarametaro said Wednesday. The notices are scheduled to go out in the late spring, he said, and will include the deadline for removing the moorings.
Ciarametaro said the permit holders will be responsible for the cost of removing the moorings and the majority will be able to return to the same general mooring location once the work is completed.
“For the most part, permit holders will be able to return to their previous location,” he said. “There will be some sections, though, where we will take advantage of the project to do a little reorganizing to attain maximum efficiency for the mooring field.”
The project, under the authority of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, is designed to remove sand and gravel from various locations of the river — the majority of which are north of the MBTA railroad bridge — to restore the federal channel to appropriate navigable depths.
The USACE issued a public notice for the project on Feb. 6 that allows for a 30-day comment period, ending March 6. Comments should be sent to the USACE’s New England District at 696 Virginia Road, Concord, MA 01742, or emailed to nae-pn-nav@usace.army.mil.
The dredging, which will be performed by a private contractor using a mechanical dredge and scows, is set to begin in October and last up to four months, according to the public notice. The contractor will be allowed to dredge 24 hours per day, seven days per week.
Most of the removed sandy material — about 132,500 cubic yards — will be transported to the Ipswich Bay Nearshore Disposal Site, which is 1.5 miles north of Farm Point and Wingaersheek and Coffins beaches and has an average water depth of 32 feet.
The remaining 7,500 cubic yards of sandy material and all the gravel will be deposited at the Gloucester Historic Disposal Site, which sits about seven-tenths of a mile due south of the beginning of the Dog Bar breakwater, in 80 to 120 feet of water.
Tim Dugan, USACE spokesman, said owners of private riverside property who pay for their own dredging might be able to piggyback on the federal project to dispose of their dredged material at the project’s disposal sites.
“They would have to get a permit from the Army Corps of Engineers for the dredging and the private material would have to suitable for disposal,” Dugan said.
The USACE last dredged portions of the Annisquam in 1976, when it removed about 2,700 cubic yards of sand from the 8-foot channel in Ipswich Bay and transported it to a site about three nautical miles north of the Annisquam Lighthouse.
“Natural shoaling processes have reduced available depths to as little as 1 foot in portions of the 8-foot MLLW (“Mean Lower Low Water”) channel and anchorage, making navigation hazardous or impossible at lower stages of the tide,” Erika Marks, a project manager for the USACE, said in a statement accompanying the public notice.
The accumulation of the sand and gravel has severely limited the ability of first responders from the city and Coast Guard to navigate certain stretches of the river in larger vessels for enforcement or rescue.
“This something that’s been desperately needed to be done for a long time, so we’re happy to see it’s finally going to happen,” said Ciarametaro, who is scheduled to meet next week with members of the USACE project team. “People have been talking about this and trying to get this done for 20 years, so it’s great it’s finally going to happen.”
Source: gloucestertimes.com
