Posted on March 15, 2018
By Mike Davis, stardem.com
Every five or six years, sand that has washed into the Kent Narrows channel over time becomes too high and needs to be dredged.
The Queen Anne’s County commissioners recently voted unanimously in favor of entering an agreement for engineering services for Kent Narrows dredging with BayLand Consultants and Designers Inc. for $39,500.
The engineering project is funded through the Queen Anne’s County Kent Narrows Dredging Project budget. The county has received a grant in the amount of $500,000 from the Maryland Department of Natural Resources Waterway Improvement fund for the Fiscal Year 2018 budget for construction. Public Landings Supervisor James Wood said a grant through the same program for Fiscal Year 2019 has been submitted.
The contract stipulates BayLand Consultants and Designers Inc. will complete design work, obtain necessary permits, create construction documents for further bid proposals and to contract administration and inspection of the dredging project, according to Wood. The channel is a federal U.S. Army Corps of Engineers navigation channel.
The material removed from the channel will be placed on the National Wildlife Refuge Eastern Neck Island shoreline to create a marsh. The sediment will be placed behind existing stone breakwaters. Sediment from previous dredges has been taken to the National Wildlife Refuge, Wood said.
A pre-bid meeting was held at the Parks Department, 1945 4-H Park Road, Centreville, on Jan. 22 for interested contractors, and on Jan. 31 county officials opened and publicly read aloud the bid proposals.
The Chester River hydraulic dredging will follow the existing U.S. Army Corps of Engineers channel limits and markers and will create 75 foot-wide channel with a minus-seven feet average low water level. Wood estimated there is 12,500 cubic-feet of material to be dredged.
The Request for Proposals for the engineering services states the contractor must perform a pre-dredge hydrographic survey of the channel as well as bathymetric surveys, the completion of construction drawings and specifications. In the 75-foot-wide dredge area, four core sediment samples looking for grain sizes and pollutants will be taken as well as estimates made for the amount of dredged material.
Once the engineering services are completed, the contractor will analyze construction bids and make a recommendation to the county commissioners for approval. Once channel dredging commences, the engineering contractor will perform inspections of the channel a total three times throughout the project. A post-dredge survey will be completed by the engineering contractor.
All engineering work, including acquiring permits and creating construction bid documents, must be completed within 120 calendar days of county officials awarding BayLand Consultants and Designers Inc. a notice to proceed.
Commissioner Jim Moran inquired about the possibility of finding a solution to the channel filling up other than spending about $1 million every six years to dredge the channel. Moran said something, such as the creation of a jetty at that location, needs to be looked at as a solution so the county doesn’t continually spend money on the same issue.
Source: stardem.com
