Posted on May 22, 2017
By Jacob Owens, Cecil Whig
Nearly 18 months after town officials and local business owners began sounding the alarm about the increasingly shallow Chesapeake City Basin, real progress is starting to be made.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which owns about half of the basin, applied for a dredging permit and a water quality certificate for the dredge spoils disposal earlier this spring. Funding for the project has also seemingly been secured with a backup in hand as well.
“We are committed and looking forward to doing this project,” said Gavin Kaiser, the new C&D Canal project manager for the Corps’ Philadelphia District, on Tuesday. “It’s a hot item for us.”
Kaiser, who took over from longtime project manager Tim Kelly a few months ago and has been instrumental in the progress of the Corps’ Pearce Creek remediation project in Earleville over the past few years, reassured locals that the Corps will be a good partner.
“We understand the needs of the town and the community and have been working with the town administration to make sure that they understand this is a priority for us too,” he said.
Since submitting their water quality certificate application to the Maryland Department of the Environment a few months ago, Kaiser said Corps officials have been in consistent communication with their counterparts who they work with often.
“We’d look to be dredging by the end of September, but that’s dependent on when, and if, we’re given a water quality certificate,” he noted.
Kaiser said he anticipated being able to fund the Corps’ portion of the project, which would include the entire area of the basin owned by the Corps and possibly some small areas in the canal adjacent to the basin’s mouth, using federal funds.
Should some issue arise with the Corps’ federal budget, town officials successfully lobbied the Hogan administration and state lawmakers for a $620,000 grant from the Maryland Department of Natural Resources Waterway Improvement Fund.
The town secured a $100,000 grant from the same fund last year to pay for its dredging of town docks and Gianmarco Martuscelli, owner of the Chesapeake Inn Marina & Restaurant, has reported that his business was prepared to pay its roughly $60,000 portion.
Last week, Mayor Dean Geracimos said it remains his goal to get dredging done as soon as possible and he’s been reaching out to anyone who can help push the project alone.
“This is a tragic thing that’s happened to Chesapeake City and it’s affecting our tax base big time,” he said. “Frankly, it’s probably been unsafe at times so we’re hoping the Corps comes through with their dredging budget.”
After it was last dredged in 2010, the roughly 1,500-foot-wide basin had a maximum depth of 10 to 12 feet, but now parts of the basin are as shallow as 4 feet at low tide. After a winter, it’s common for some spots in the basin to lose up to a foot of depth while high traffic areas slowly gain back some depth into the spring, Martuscelli said. Water taxis brought in some guests from boats anchored farther out in deeper areas last season, but it’s not an ideal solution.
On Tuesday, Martuscelli reported that the area around his docks hadn’t gotten any better or worse over this past winter. Without dredging this summer, the Chesapeake Inn will continue to have to find proper accommodations for boats with larger drafts, however, while also navigating the tides to avoid stranding a vessel.
Noting that September dredging would avoid the busiest parts of the season for his business, Martuscelli said he was glad to hear progress was being made.
“I just hope that it does happen because it’s something that’s needed,” he said, noting the lack of dredging over the past seven years has an impact on the town’s economy. “Bigger boats are more likely to be folks who are going to stay overnight, spend money in town at the shops and grab breakfast at a cafe the next day. I know a lot of the stores felt it last year when we had the basin’s problems and the bridge construction. This year we luckily only have the basin to deal with, but it’s still going to affect the shops.”
Source: Cecil Whig
