Posted on April 25, 2017
By Jennifer Turiano, greenwich time
The Greenwich Harbor Commission has submitted an application to the Connecticut Port Authority for an $8,000 grant to provide seed money for dredging Greenwich Harbor.
Commission members said they are hoping to find other sources of funding to cover what would be an expensive project to remove silt from the downtown waterway.
“Priority is now going to be given to dredging Greenwich Harbor,” Geoff Steadman, a consultant for the Harbor Management Commission, said this week. “Essentially, to help start the process and use it for planning purposes and to do certain tasks the Corps of Engineers need to be done.”
Commission members this week indicated dredging Greenwich Harbor could be a much more complicated and costlier project than the recently completed clearing of Cos Cob Harbor, in which some 61,000 cubic yards of silt was removed and deposited into dumping grounds in Long Island Sound at a cost of about $3 million.
The Army Corps of Engineers found PCBs in the silt clogging Greenwich Harbor during testing performed several years ago.
“It appears that a substantial portion of the dredge material is not suitable for open water disposal in Long Island Sound,” Harbor Commission Chairman Bruce Angiolillo said this week. “So that means alternatives to open water disposal will have to be explored.”
One possibility could be to bury the silt and then cap it with clean material. Another alternative would be to dispose of it on land, he said.
“But that would likely be prohibitively expensive,” Angiolillo said. “Another alternative may be to use the material to expand waterfront parkland, like Roger Sherman Baldwin Park.”
It is not a problem that will be solved soon. Angiolillo pointed out that although the commission is taking initial steps toward dredging, it will be years before actual work is done.
“It took 14 years to get the Mianus done,” he said, “so you’re looking at a multi-year process. It’s unknowable. The project is multi-millions of dollars and we would need to have state and federal funding.”
But he said it is important that the commission and town demonstrate their commitment to clearing the Greenwich Harbor channel.
“The other aspect is it demonstrates to (state) Port Authority and others that we are indeed moving ahead,” Angiolillo said, “and so they realize it is not just talk. … That we are real in terms of going to the next step.”
Source: greenwich time
