Posted on March 2, 2021
Beverly looks for ways to dispose of contaminated materials
BEVERLY — The state has awarded the city a $140,000 grant to try to get the stalled Bass River dredging project underway.
The city had planned to start dredging the river in 2019 for the first time in more than 60 years, but the project was called off at the last minute when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers determined that the sediment that would be dug up is too contaminated to dump in the ocean.
On Wednesday, the state announced that Beverly had received a $140,000 Seaport Economic Council grant to study the possibility of constructing a “confined aquatic disposal,” or CAD, cell in the Bass River or Beverly Harbor where the sediment could safely be dumped.
Mayor Mike Cahill said the technique involves digging a hole in the ocean floor, dumping that excavated clean material elsewhere, and putting the contaminated material from the Bass River in the hole.
“It may work, it may not work in the big picture, but this is a very necessary step to figure out,” Cahill said.
Cahill said the city will use the state grant to hire a company to explore the option of using a CAD cell. The process would add costs to the $2.8 million project, although how much has yet to be determined.
The Bass River, which runs from the Danvers River near the Beverly-Salem bridge to Elliott Street near the Cummings Center, needs to be dredged because it is difficult for boats to navigate at low tide. The city said the harbormaster’s office responds about 30 times a year to boats that have been grounded.
The river is home to 14 commercial fishing vessels, about 70 private moorings and slips, and Hill’s Yacht Yard and the Bass Haven Yacht Club.
The city was awarded a $1.4 million state grant to begin the dredging, and the City Council approved spending up to $1.5 million to match the grant. The Army Corps of Engineering had issued a permit for the project in March 2018. But with the project about to get underway in December 2019, the agency said a further review of testing data showed that samples of the sediment indicated “carcinogenic risk” and could not be dumped in the ocean, as was planned. That stopped the project before it began.
The contractor hired to do the dredging, Burnham Associates, filed a lawsuit asking the city to pay them $1.2 million in damages related to the costs of mobilizing and demobilizing for the project and having equipment and crew members on standby while awaiting final approval.
The city has filed a third-party complaint saying that its consultant on the project, GEI Designers of Massachusetts, should be liable for any damages because it failed to notify the city that test data from 2008 revealed the high toxicity levels of the sediment in the river.
Cahill said he could not comment on the lawsuit, which is pending in U.S. District Court in Boston.
Staff writer Paul Leighton can be reached at 978-338-2535, by email at pleighton@salemnews.com, or on Twitter at @heardinbeverly.
