Posted on March 7, 2019
The Barnstable County dredge off Fox Hill. FILE PHOTO
A preliminary study of Chatham’s east-facing waterways, from Pleasant Bay to Nantucket Sound, together with anecdotal evidence from commercial fishermen, makes it abundantly clear that dredging near the North Cut will be necessary to facilitate navigation in the months ahead.
The problem is that the town’s effort to secure a permit to dredge the area is tied up in a lawsuit and state department of environmental protection appeal filed by a Minister’s Point property owner who claims that previous dredging near Aunt Lydia’s Cove was responsible for erosion that led to the collapse of his seawall. The planned future dredging, the owner claims, could also lead to damage to his property.
The study by Applied Coastal Research and Engineering and the Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies presented last Thursday seems to contradict these claims. The study found that if anything is to blame for erosion, it’s the natural evolution of the barrier beach. As North Beach Island deteriorates and the South Cut shoals, flow through the North Cut has increased, funneling tides in and out of Pleasant Bay. Sand sweeping into the North Cut has created shoals that increase the currents and push the deep channel close to the shore from Minister’s Point north. This has resulted in currents of up to six knots, faster than the maximum seen in the Cape Cod Canal.
Those shoals have made it increasingly difficult for commercial fishermen to get through the North Cut at any but the highest tide. The fleet has to leave by a group at high tide, said Aunt Lydia’s Cove Committee Chairman Doug Feeney, and return together again at high tide. While the fleet is currently fishing out of Saquatucket Harbor in Harwich, it will soon return to Aunt Lydia’s Cove, and failure to dredge out those shoals could make for difficult, and potentially dangerous, conditions, not just for the fleet, but for the many recreational boaters who use the North Cut.
As Feeney pointed out, this sets up a conflict between a shorefront property owner and the fishing fleet. The owner wants to protect his property; fishermen need to make a living. In this case, it seems the property owner’s beef should be with nature, and not the town’s attempts to facilitate safe navigation. Selectmen should heed Feeney’s call to air the issue sooner rather than later, and work toward settling the suit and appeal as quickly as possible so that the dredging can go forward.
Source: capecodchronicle.com
