Posted on July 4, 2016
By Sean Horgan, Gloucester Times
National Grid’s contractors will return to work next week on the utility’s $30 million Gloucester Harbor cleanup project, providing yet another element to navigate around during the busiest time of the year along the city’s waterfront.
The utility’s contractor is scheduled to begin the summer portion of the construction schedule — by far the most challenging for the neighbors at the site — first on the property of the U.S. Coast Guard’s Station Gloucester, before shuffling next door to Maritime Gloucester on Aug. 1 and then back onto city-owned property at Solomon Jacobs Park after Labor Day.
“We knew this was going to be the most difficult portion for us coming up,” said Tom Balf, executive director of the Maritime Gloucester education and maritime center. “We’ll have all of July without workers and equipment on our site, but that will change in August.”
The actual work on the project began last September. Workers have completed the bulk of the necessary dredging of the inner channel directly behind Maritime Gloucester, with a small portion of the work being deferred until the fall, National Grid said.
The project also calls for the reconstruction of the sea walls throughout the area, a re-landscaping of the park and possibly rebuilding the docks and piers at Maritime Gloucester depending on how much they have to be dismantled during the dredging.
The initial plan called for National Grid contractors take down Maritime Gloucester’s piers to provide unobstructed dredging throughout that portion of the harbor bed before rebuilding the piers.
Now, Balf said, there is a possibility the workers might find an alternative method for dredging that will allow the piers to remain standing during the work.
Either way, August is sure to be a challenge for the popular waterfront destination during what normally would be one of its busiest portions of the year.
“Basically, we gave up August to keep this a two-year project rather than have it go longer,” Balf said. “Even if the docks come down, we’re going to continue to run programs and admit people to the museum.”
The work, however, will require both of the schooners that tie up at Maritime Gloucester’s Harriet Webster Pier — the 122-foot Adventure and the 58-foot pinky Ardelle — to relocate.
Adventure will head to the Jodrey State Fish Pier, while the Ardelle will tie up at a mooring near Ten Pound Island while picking up and dropping off its passengers at the city’s Harbormaster pier.
Solomon Jacobs Park will stay open throughout the summer, according to National Grid, but close to the public when work crews return there after Labor Day.
National Grid’s cleanup of decades-old contaminants along the Harbor Loop waterfront, according to company spokeswoman Danielle Williamson, remains on schedule for its target completion date of May 2017.
The project, almost a decade in the planning, is removing contaminated sediment and dirt from as deep as 60 feet below Solomon Jacobs Park and the harbor bed that were contaminated during the century-long operation of the old Gloucester Gas Light Co. that occupied the site from around 1850 until 1950.
The Gloucester Gas Light Co.’s primary function was to turn coal into a synthetic gas known as “syngas,” a process that also created a contaminate byproduct of coal tar that seeped into the ground and portions of the harbor around the old plant.
The project already has forced three small businesses to relocate out of the National Grid-owned property at 19 Harbor Loop, while splitting off some of the Harbormaster’s administrative resources to a space at the city’s Department of Public Works facility on Poplar Street.
Those resources are due to fully move back soon to 19 Harbor Loop, where the harbormaster office continues to operate.
Source: Gloucester Times
