Posted on April 1, 2019
CHATHAM — Marinas need access to the water to survive.
As a relatively new county dredge continues to experience mechanical problems, Outermost Harbor Marine CEO Farrell Kahn decided it was time for his company to take matters into its own hands.
Outermost Harbor’s access channel was down to depths of 2½ feet in some spots, and with the new dredge’s problems causing delays the waiting line was only getting longer, Kahn said.
So, the marina decided to buy its own dredge and is wrapping up work on the channel this week with about a month to go until officially opening for the season.
“We’re looking at a maintenance (dredging) program,” that would be free of the uncertainties and competition for the county dredges, Kahn said.
“We have a huge waiting list of projects,” said Barnstable County Administrator John “Jack” Yunits Jr. The county recently put out a request for proposals for a new $1.2 million to $1.5 million 14-inch hydraulic cutter dredge. It is intended to be the third dredge, along with the 22-year-old Codfish and the new $2 million dredge that was delivered last year but has experienced a laundry list of problems since.
On Friday, work on the Stage Harbor channel was postponed because of more issues with the new dredge. Chatham was counting on it to clean out the channel and deposit sand on the town’s Nantucket Sound beaches as part of a multiyear plan to combat erosion along that shoreline.
Despite the delay, Coastal Resources Director Theodore Keon said the channel and the beaches will be usable this summer.
The new dredge is scheduled to be in dry dock soon in Fairhaven for about two weeks of upgrades and repairs. Technicians from Ellicott Dredges of Baltimore, Maryland, are coming to oversee the work, Yunits said.
“We have four pages of modifications, some of them are major, including adjustments to the spuds (the “legs” that extend to the bottom and help hold the dredge in place while it works), and the winches that need to be adjusted,” Yunits said Friday. “It’s a major amount of work.”
The cutter suction dredge technology on all three vessels is similar but the one from Ellicott was custom-made for the region and is more complicated, Yunits said. In May, the Codfish will also go to dry dock in Fairhaven for repairs and evaluation to see if it is worth repairing. That decision hinges on an examination of the hull and fuel tanks, he said.
The goal of the county dredge program is to bring in around $1.8 million a year to offset expenses. Cape towns received $1.65 million last year, including $350,000 for the Stage Harbor project, as part of the state’s pilot program to fund dredging projects. On Friday, the state announced there would be $4 million in grants for dredging with an application deadline of May 1.
“It’s a very expensive program to run, and this year we won’t make that because of problems with the new dredge,” said Yunits.
Despite the problems, Ellicott has been “very responsive” and excellent to work with, he said.
With the goal of adding another dredge, Yunits said the county is trying to address the backlog of projects and to take on some new challenges.
“We’re going to try over the next several months to reinvent the dredge program,” he said.
In the meantime, Kahn and Outermost Harbor Marine will tend to their own problems as the shifting sands of Chatham sometimes create major headaches or boons overnight. When the April Fools’ Day storm of 2007 punched a hole in the barrier beach to the east of the Outermost marina, it created a whole new set of opportunities with direct access to the Atlantic now possible.
But it also exposed the marina and the surrounding neighborhood to waves and tidal energy that have caused flooding and a new source of sand migration that can compromise established channels. Kahn pointed out that the Outermost Harbor channel is a public channel used by the U.S. Coast Guard, and the Chatham harbormaster, fire and natural resources departments.
“The severity of the issue, the dynamics of the issue … is more significant after the land connection of South Beach to the mainland was breached a couple of years ago,” said Keon. ”(The) sand is moving very quickly out there and there has been infilling of this channel and a small public mooring basin next to it.”
Source: capecodtimes.com
