Posted on December 19, 2017
By Paul Gately, Wicked Local
Tis the season for predictions laced with degrees of hopefulness and determination.
Sandwich Town Manager Bud Dunham predicts that by the end of 2019, the town will know if permits can be secured to tap the Scusset State Beach basin north of the canal for sand that can be placed on always-eroding Town Neck Beach.
Dunham also hopes that a final draft of an Army Corps of Engineers Section 1-11 study will be produced on whether the canal’s east end jetty does in fact block the littoral drift of sand along Cape Cod Bay from Manomet, interrupting the flow of water to Town Neck beachfronts.
The town also hopes to proceed with a proposal to dredge the Old Harbor entrance to the Great Marsh and place the sediment on Town Neck Beach.
All the proposals involve long and difficult permit requests and extensive environmental review, Dunham told selectmen December 14. He said the town continues to rely on research and shoreline data derived by the consulting Woods Hole Group.
Dunham said the town essentially is in a wait-and-see mode on the federal jetty study, and that Sandwich may have to fund a portion of any upcoming dredge efforts before the federal government assumes any official responsibility for trapped sand and an eroded beach.
Dunham also said tapping Scusset-basin for 300,000 cubic yards of sediment is a difficult project given the environmental review involved and the permits that need to be secured.
“There are concerns that are being explored,” he told selectmen.
As difficult as the Scusset proposal may be, he said, the permits to dredge Old Harbor may present even more obstacles. Dunham said if all goes well, the goal would be to dredge 65,000 cubic yards from what appears to be a constantly shifting channel with work done by the county dredge.
“There are three phases of planning for Old Harbor,” Dunham said. “It involves a ton of work. Phase two should be done by next fall. Then in Phase three, we would have to decide if we want to proceed.”
Selectmen Chairman Susan James thanked Dunham for the shoreline updates, which she noted are complicated, time-consuming, technical in nature, costly, and labor-intensive.
Source: Wicked Local
