Posted on December 22, 2021
ORLEANS — With its consultant Leslie Fields phoning in from the road, the Orleans Select Board was unable to delve as deeply into dredging as it would have liked. The result was a delay until Jan. 5 on furthering last week’s discussion about Eastham’s withdrawal two days earlier from the agreement to dredge the Nauset Estuary.
The project was kicked off by a citizen’s petition spearheaded by local fishermen in 2016. The inlet had migrated north and due to silting sand becomes treacherous as well as limited in accessibility. Boats are unable to get all the way back to Town Cove from the inlet except at higher tides and many fishermen are forced to moor near the inlet off Priscilla’s Landing, on the open marsh.
Orleans footed the bills for surveys, studies, designs and permitting filings by the Woods Hole Group (Fields’ employer), amounting to $670,000 so far. The actual dredging will cost $3.1 million by a 2020 WHG estimate.
What’s left
“What’s before you now is to decide what to do,” Town Administrator John Kelly told the Select Board on Dec. 15. “The funding and contracts are in place. Orleans has funded 100 percent of the effort. Eastham has not funded anything. We are under contract with the Woods Hole Group to put the permits together and to do work at Mill Pond on the red tide cysts.”
Orleans has no permits at this point and would need to file an Environmental Impact Report with Massachusetts and get permits under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the Massachusetts Environmental Policy Act (MEPA), and certification under the National Clean Water Act and under the Massachusetts Public Waterfront Act (Chapter 91), which would be awarded by the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection. It also would need permits from the Cape Cod Commission; the Department of Coast Zone Management; the conservation commissions of Eastham and Orleans; and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
The towns were in the process of filing an Expanded Environmental Notification Form under MEPA with the state and have a draft in hand, but the recent change in dredging procedure would require that to be reworked.
Orleans’ options
“Leslie indicated a concern about the red tide cysts at Mill Pond and whether we could do mechanical dredging there,” Kelly said. “The main issue is…if you can go forward without Eastham signing onto the MEPA application? If the board decides to terminate we’ve already paid for the work and deliverables. Everything we’ve been doing is in phases.”
The town could continue with the fill permitting process for the entire project or scale it back to clearing silting in Orleans’ waters near Priscilla Landing and Mill Pond. Unfortunately, the channel back to Town Cove is essentially the border between the towns. The approach to the inlet is entirely within Eastham and the Cape Cod National Seashore.
“Just because Eastham pulled out, I don’t think we need to shut the whole thing down,” board member Mark Mathison said. “What can we still do? What makes sense for Orleans?”
The board is expected to meet with Fields on Jan. 5.