Posted on November 30, 2017
By Jacob Owens, Cecil Whig
Nearly two years after locals, visitors and town officials began voicing their frustrations about an increasingly shallow basin, a welcome sight appeared in town: a dredge boat.
A crew from Jade Creek Construction LLC, of Manassas, Va., began work Monday morning to deepen the Chesapeake City basin, also known as Back Creek basin due to the waterway that feeds into it from the south.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers awarded Jade Creek the roughly $2.2 million contract in October for the dredging of the basin and parts of the C&D Canal.
The work will involve dredging the area owned by the Corps, roughly half of the basin, to a depth of 10 feet, as well as dredging an additional 10,000-linear-foot stretch in the C&D Canal east of the basin to a depth of 35 feet. Corps officials expect to remove about 65,000 cubic yards of sediment in the project.
There are acutally two different types of dredge boats working on the project, a cutter-suction and a clam shell bucket. The cutter-suction dredge, working inside the basin, has a drill-like head that is dropped down to the basin floor where it churns up the settled sediment and pumps it out through a pipeline. The clam shell bucket dredge, working in the C&D Canal, will drop to the bottom of the canal where it will scoop out sediment for placement into a barge.
Both projects will send their dredge spoils to the Bethel disposal area to the east of the Corps’ Chesapeake City offices.
Tim Boyle, spokesman for the Corps’ Philadelphia District, said that the dredging will take about 60 days, weather permitting, with the hope that the resulting depth would hold for about a decade.
“There’s always a concern about weather, but as far as what is forecasted in the foreseeable future we think we’ll be OK,” he said.
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 3 feet at low tide. In December 2015, town officials and Gianmarco Martuscelli, owner of the Chesapeake Inn restaurant and marina, began discussing the urgent need to address the shoaling in the basin. As the basin fills in, boats carrying the tourists that Chesapeake City seeks for its tourism base often have to bypass the town.
Over the past two years, Mayor Dean Geracimos lobbied state and federal lawmakers and Corps officials to push the dredging as a priority. To pay for the dredging, the town secured a $100,000 grant from the Maryland Department of Natural Resources Waterway Improvement Fund last year to cover the dredging of town docks. It also secured another $620,000 grant from that same fund this year as a contingency in case of federal funding woes. That will not be needed, however, as the Corps approved funds to pay for its portion of the dredging.
While the Corps’ project is underway, dredging of the town property along with private operations are still technically under review. The Maryland Department of the Environment has until Nov. 30 to review and provide comments on required water quality certificates for the town of Chesapeake City, the Chesapeake Inn, Chesapeake Anchorage marina and one private resident before it would allow dumping of dredge spoils from those areas.
Town Manager Sandra Edwards said she wasn’t worried about the town’s prospects on that review though and expected its dredging of about 4,500 cubic yards around the town docks to proceed as planned.
“It’s definitely a welcome sight to see the boats in town,” she said.
It was a sentiment shared by Martuscelli.
“I can’t believe it’s actually happening,” he said. “It came with good timing too, because our season is over and most of the boats are getting out of the water until spring.”
While still awaiting the issuance of a water quality certificate, Martuscelli said his marina was already preparing to pull out its pilings and move the dock to allow room for an impending dredge.
Kenny Reed, owner of neighboring Chesapeake Anchorage marina for the past 30 years, said he too had already removed his pilings and two docks. Like his neighbors, Reed believes that a freshly dredged basin will spell an improved local economy next year.
“It’s been really bad lately, it was about 3 feet at low tide,” he said. “I probably lost about half of my business this past year so I’m pretty excited to see the dredge boat here.”
While Martuscelli admits that plenty of boats were still traversing the shallow basin to make it to his restaurant this past summer, their size spelled their potential economic impact.
“We’ve probably had more boaters come in for lunch and leave, which is tougher to gauge,” he said. “With a big boat, they’re likely bringing more people, staying longer and venturing into town to shop.”
The return of larger boats to the basin will also have a much simpler impact for his business, Martuscelli said.
“It looks good to have a marina full of big boats,” he added.
Source: Cecil Whig
