Posted on August 28, 2017
By Katherine Hafner, The Virginian-Pilot
Joel Scussel stood on a wooden dock along the Dismal Swamp Canal on a clear and somewhat cool summer morning.
The dock at Arbuckle Landing sits by the end of the feeder ditch where water flows east from Lake Drummond, which is in the middle of the Great Dismal Swamp.
The calm waterway Thursday was a marked contrast to October when Hurricane Matthew blew through, necessitating the work Scussel now oversees as Norfolk-based project manager for the Army Corps of Engineers.
“This was all underwater. All the water was pushing sand this way,” he said, gesturing east from the ditch. “I was just astounded it could get that high.”
Lake Drummond surpassed critical levels during Matthew and sent water spilling into the feeder ditch and across the swamp. Dirt and debris clogged the canal, and it’s been closed since.
The Army Corps is nearing the end of almost a year of work to reopen the canal to boaters. Crews cleared more than 350 trees from the canal.
Scussel said three main areas needed dredging: The Deep Creek Lock, which crews finished clearing in June; the feeder ditch area where they’re currently working; and at Turner’s Cut just below the South Mills Lock in North Carolina, which will come next. Combined, the project carries an $800,000 price tag.
Slightly south of the ditch’s eastern terminus Thursday, machinery hummed as workers on a barge raised and lowered a crane into the canal to excavate dirt.
Three people work on the barge at a time. Another works at the placement site where they take all the dredged material roughly twice a day, Scussel said.
By work’s end, it will total 1,500 cubic yards – more than 30,000 gallons — and that’s in the ditch area alone. Crews use a stick to manually gauge the depth along the way.
The goal is to get to 6 feet so recreational boaters can pass through. After Matthew it was just a foot deep, according to the Army Corps.
The crews will finish working the southeastern section of the ditch this week, then turn around and clear the northeastern mouth.
After that, it’s onto Turner’s Cut. The damage there has hurt Elizabeth City, Scussel said, where boaters often travel.
“I’ve heard a lot of complaints from down there.”
Officials hope to reopen the waterway by October. That’ll be a full year after Matthew, which Scussel said caused the worst damage he’s seen since Hurricane Floyd in 1999.
“We got hit with a lot of rain in September, then in October Matthew came in. Everything was saturated. The system just wasn’t ready.”
So is it now?
Not exactly.
The Army Corps has to plan pretty far in advance, so nothing solid’s in the works yet, except for buying a few new generators.
Scussel said they’re in talks with Chesapeake officials and “there’s ideas out there,” including adding control structures at the Deep Creek Lock.
But that’ll take time – and money.
In the meantime, if there’s another Matthew, the canal could start swelling once again.
“Every hurricane scares me now,” he said.
Source: The Virginian-Pilot
