Posted on March 5, 2018
By Sean Philip Cotter, The Patriot Ledger
A Quincy businessman has secured a $122 million contract to deepen some of the shipping lanes in Boston Harbor.
Jay Cashman, who owns several heavy-construction and dredging companies based in Quincy, will be paid by the Army Corps of Engineers to dredge portions of the harbor to provide access for larger ships.
The bid documents posted online by the federal government say Cashman’s company will dredge the Broad Sound North Entrance Channel, portions of the Main Ship Channel, President Roads Anchorage, and parts of the Reserve Channel.
The Main Channel is the narrow area of the harbor between South Boston and East Boston, through which vessels heading to the inner harbor must pass. The Reserve Channel branches off it, and carries ships to the South Boston shipyards. The other areas to be dredged are farther out in the harbor, toward Deer Island.
The federal government estimates the work will cost $100 million to $250 million and take seven years.
Cashman will be tasked with removing 11.7 million cubic yards of silt, blue clay, till and weathered rock, which will make those areas deeper by about 50 feet, and make some of them wider. Most of that material will end up at the Massachusetts Bay Disposal Site, 20 miles offshore.
No one from the company who could speak about the contract could be reached for comment on Thursday.
The Cashman company headquarters is on South Street, at the former Fore River shipyard. The company owns 38 acres of the shipyard, including the area where the USS Salem is docked. The company has done work in many locations along the East Coast, including Quincy, Boston and Scituate.
Source: The Patriot Ledger
